Did a little bit of research on it after having seen it around Barry's childhood neck: http://www.theworldsprophecy.com/obamas-faith-is/ Also being discussed on my FB page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/No-Ne...ef=ts#!/photo.php?pid=6138293&id=197766376012
Will, a couple of questions for ya: Do you deny the existence of god? Or would it be more appropriate to state that you don't believe in god until proven otherwise? If you don't believe in god until proven otherwise - would you agree that you are in fact an Agnostic Atheist?
Looks like some kind of a space ship, the 2 circles on the side of the figure could be the engine or smaller crafts floating near the main one. or the main cigar shaped one could be a symbol the 2 circles (if they are spaceships) carrying, trying to symbolize something to the humans below.
I was born a non-theist, then I became involved with religion around the age of 8. I was involved with several Baptist churches, which are part of Protestant Christianity. I was a pretty serious adherent until some point in my teenage years. One day I was working in the garage and I just came to the realization that there was no God, and without a God all this religion and church stuff didn't make sense. There was no traumatic event, just a logical deduction. But then... then there was trauma. The church was my entire life. I was studying and teaching, even though I was barely a teenager. It took me many years to wean myself off of church. Heck, I even co-taught a Sunday school class for a short time more than five years later. It also took me quite some time to emotionally accept that I was going to die. Losing that "eternal life" ticket was freakishly hard for me. I will die. I will completely cease to exist. On the positive side, I never existed before the 1960's and the world got along just fine without me. I do have some level of ego-driven desire to mark the world with my presence -- to create something that will continue to exist after my short time here. I can't recall ever doing so. It seems to me that those people believe in another religion: Communism. I cannot find empirical evidence which shows me how Communism is fundamentally different than any other religion. Perhaps Communism should be seen as a sub-set of Atheism, but the very thought turns my stomach. The Communists define "productive" as "evil" and "slavemaster" as "good" and frankly I'd feel more comfortable manning the barricades with the religious kooks. I'd prefer, of course, to strengthen the positive Atheist movement and weaken the Communist movement. I'll have to come up with another name though, Positive Christianity made such a bad name for itself that Positive Atheism is terminological suicide. Man... The Roman Catholic Church seems strongly opposed to evolving. Wouldn't the Evangelicals or Unitarians be a better example? And perhaps an Atheist church could help to fix that. Atheism has been infected with Communism -- mostly because there has been no other voice to oppose it. Atheists are in many ways like Anarchists -- hard to organize. The Communists made organization a top priority and the rest of us... pretty much just ignored them. I don't think that Atheists, myself included, value God or Religion. Some of us though, see the evolutionary value of a good fight. We have a deeply humanist tradition, caused by hundreds of years of classic liberalism. To my mind, this is superior to Christian values. Hume, who you listed next to Locke, is one of us. John Stuart Mill is another. Ayn Rand is another, and she's certainly no Communist. I'm not sure that I want to go into why Christianity sucks in this thread. Perhaps I will start a "Jesus was a hippie freak" thread. As much tolerance as any other modern church. Competition is good; capitulation is not. As H. L. Mencken wrote, "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." We have the advantage here. We can create a strong constitution for the church which will help to prevent such occurrences. No other church has as much ability to learn from men like Locke as we do. The Atheists church could be, and should be, the most well-governed church ever to exist. I am so egotistical that it's hard for me to imagine a world without a wonderful guy like me. Agnostics really annoy me. The way science works is that we make up a theory and if it fits the available facts we accept it until contrary evidence is found. All current evidence shows that there is no god. Therefore, until evidence to the contrary is found, I deny the existence of a god.
- You, as a person physically and "spiritually" cease to exist. This happens progressively while becoming adults to those who replace their origin from the Garden to their own misconceptions and indeed die as mispents....good riddance, just don't destroy things on your way out. What the Atheist of this thread no longer comprehend is the soul of children have in them the knowledge of the everlasting and a desire to accomplish its goal. Teaching children death is final is only a mortal concept and will prove equally fallible to children as unfounded dogma. These Atheist are no different than the blind religious. .
Not all Atheists are Communists, but all Communists are definitely Atheists eh? They are definitely helping besmirch the name Atheist. Another reason the Communists were so easily able to hijack the religion. Rejection of God and Religion leaves a lot of room for other values. Throw in communism and now you have a full featured belief system and political orthodoxy. Its really more of a movement people can get behind. I don't think so. When you consider they started out publishing the bible in a dead language to keep people from being able to read it, burning people at the stake alive for possession of a bible, starting wars for reasons of political and financial gain, aiding in the indoctrination, and sometimes slaughter of uneducated tribal people, I'd say they have evolved quite a bit. The Holy Roman Catholic Church of today is much friendlier and soft to the touch. I can see a day in the not too distant future when priests are allowed to marry, if only to get rid of the pedophilia issues. Maybe one day, they will be accepting of homosexuals. For a certainty, we have a culture that is humanist. Some Atheists argue these values in America come from Humanists (I'm not sure if that is the argument you are making here), but the founding fathers didn't legislate Humanism and the people who settled this country weren't highly educated, so I doubt they were well studied in philosophy. They were, however, highly religious. The fact that 10% of the people in the USA today can trace their heritage to a single ship called the Mayflower says a lot as to where our Humanism came from. I think I disagree on this point. The very premise of Atheism is the rejection of God and all God based religions. At least the Jews, Christians, and Muslims can agree there is a god, so accept each other to some extent. A church with separation of powers... now this I would have to see. I hate to sound like the cynic I am, but while our government may be one of the least corrupt governments on the face of the planet based on it's structure, it is still corrupt as hell. Why, did one try to convert you to Agnosticism? Evidence that there is no god? This I haven't seen yet. One stormy evening many years ago, my business partner and I were drinking it up when the power went out in a lightening storm. In his drunken state, I dared him to take the eight foot long steel bar from my weight set and stand on the third floor balcony holding the bar high above his head and shout out, "If there is a god, LET HIM STRIKE ME NOW!!". He took me up on my dare, and lived to tell about it. Its evidence all right. Evidence of stupidity!
It's strange. Communist dogma requires Atheism, but there are a lot of Catholic priests who are Communists. The current pope though, has little tolerance for Liberation Theology. Weak-minded people do seem to need someone to provide meaning in their lives. As Seneca the Younger wrote two thousand years ago, "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Man, you are an optimist. The Founding Fathers were a tiny minority, but they were well grounded in the philosophy of their day -- The Age of Enlightenment. They sure have funny ways of "accepting" each other. I don't see how a church made up of Atheists can do much worse. I don't think perfection is a reasonable goal, but I don't think an Atheist church would have to try very hard to be less corrupt than say... the Catholic church. Nah... I just don't like fence sitters. Remember what Jim Hightower said about the middle of the road. Some friends of mine were having a similar argument and one of them, now a lay minister, said "I will prove to you that there is a God. In two days, that tree will turn brown and in another two days it will turn green again." Needless to say, the tree failed to conform to his wishes. Two different experiments, same results. I can't prove that there is no god any more than I can't prove that there is no Santa Claus, Abominable Snowman, or Tooth Fairy. And yet I don't believe in any of them. People who choose to believe in just one of those are very amusing. If you're going to believe in one fairy tale, you might as well believe in all of them. Of course, this just brings us back to the Stephen Roberts quote, "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
Without a doubt. I just disagree with the idea that the culture of American Humanism came from the founding fathers and not religious immigrants. They didn't legislate it, and for good reason IMO. At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck for a moment, if we can take credit away from the religious for that part of our culture and assign it to the founding fathers, perhaps it makes the case that legislated Social Justice is what the founding fathers would have wanted, eventually. Well, I'm also agnostic about which direction the stock market is going to go tomorrow. When I get good evidence indicating one direction or another, I'll invest accordingly. In the meantime, sitting on the fence seems like the sensible thing to do. Of course those other stories serve no meaningful purpose, and have origins that are easily identified. You've acknowledged some of the benefits organized religion has given to society, but I think you've missed the purpose of the God story/myth. It does have purpose. It does fill in a blank, albeit not much better than any other explanation might fill in that blank. It answers the question "Why?". "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being" Albert Einstein
Except... the founding fathers wrote about what they wanted. They didn't want the "Social Justice" of Liberation Theology. They wanted a secular state, and that's what they created. Sensible perhaps, but not often useful. It answers the question incorrectly. I'm not very impressed by wrong answers. The reality is that the only answer to "Why" is the answer that we ourselves give it. The Universe has no Why, it is up to us to create our own. For me, that Why is evolution -- biological, social, and personal. My life's work is to become the best me that I can be and to help those around me do the same.
Ask yourself also why historically speaking there has been a drive to push people into religion. The witch hunts, the persecution of the non religious world wide. Appears to me that indeed those not religiously affiliated are hard to control and their ability to look into facts rather than be medicated into thinking that "god's will is being done regardless" may be viewed as a threat by some. [video=youtube;OHF0aZZ-39o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHF0aZZ-39o&feature=related[/video] Historically speaking no king was ever able to rule without the priesthood being behind him. Atheists, free thinkers and independent teachers were always labeled as terrorists, enemies of the state and satanists in order to eliminate any form of potential opposition. From: The Esoteric Agenda - Are you a religious addict?
so it has some basics? an what are? hope you have some reasonal facts? pardon seems you answered it already. thanks Will.Spencer for your response but guess deny things without having rational reasons and facts not so different from other "Isms"!
seems Communists have some differences from Atheists. maybe because they got power in some countries and reined there, whereas Atheist never got power so far and even in USA no leader dare to claim are Atheist? guess maybe same as Prophet Jesus and prophet Mohammad oh nice so you also mean atheists reject all kind of Gods and creators. Don't know how much your statement is according to facts but guess it worth to think about.
You may throw in of course that communism depended on atheism. Atheism to communism IS a religion. They required to outlaw all other religions in order to succeed.
Atheism isn't really a system like other belief systems. Atheism is just not believing that there is a god. That's it.
Will? bollox. Atheism is not a belief system. It does not take any kind of belief to be an atheist. I am an atheist which makes me religion-free.
I would argue that it is a belief system in the sense that not believing in God equates to believing in logic/science.
The lack of belief (not believing in something) equals believing something else. "I don't believe in god" and "I believe there is no god" are the same.