Is this the Atheist Fanatics Forums Off-Topic?

[Shadylookin]

All our Christians got raptured so it's just us cool guys now

 

[LucyDuke]

The person we were talking about has a Masters Degree in Biology, so I guess I was talking about the authority, eh?

I am a creationist.

One MS in biology does not "biologists" make. (Refresh context.)

 

[BasketCase]

People who like to sit and think about strategies in a strategy game are more likely to stay at a strategy game website.
People who like to sit and think about strategies are probably more likely to sit and think about God.
People who think a lot are less likely to be governed by emotions.

People who think about God and are unlikely to be governed by emotions are atheists.

All of these are true, but they're all coincidental--i.e. not the actual cause of the phenomenon being considered.

Here's what's actually going on: people who have an actual social life aren't going to be spending a lot of time screwing around on their home computer and posting inane crap on web sites devoted to video games. And religion is a social activity. You spend an hour every Sunday in a great big church, interacting with real people. In other words, having an actual social life. Hence no need to screw around on a home computer.

In other words, screwing around on a home computer and posting inane crap on a web site devoted to a computer game is a side effect rather than the cause.

Unrelated side note: I'm a pretty strange kind of atheist. I genuinely believe there is no God, but man, I'll tell ya--a lot of the time I wish there was a God, because there are a whole lot of people in this world who really need some holy wrath smote down upon their sorry pathetic asses.

 

[El_Machinae]

Before I go on about why I believe in it, how about you show me some examples where it has been disproven.

Blood clotting factors and bacteria flagellum spring to mind. ID proponents have forwarded these two molecular cascades as 'intelligently designed', but they were then shown to have natural explanations.

The oldest example of someone claiming intelligent design was of the eye.

 

[Fr8monkey]

I am going to have a bumper sticker that states:

In case of rapture, can I have your Lexus?

 

[Lay_Lay]

I've always seen agnosticism as a sign of hypocrisy and cowardness. Being an agnostic is like "OK, I don't believe in God, but I hope there is one".

No, thanks. If there's God, there must be proof of his existence. If the religious people can't prove it (by using a scientific method), the God-theory is unsubstantiated and thus irrelevant.

There is not enough agnosticism on either side of the debate.
Both sides should be admitting, "hey I don't know," then you could follow it up with a, "but here is what I believe to be the truth" or "here is what I think is most likely to be the truth."

Agnosticism - Because No One Knows! public service message

Both sides are at fault on this, on the internet debates here. Everybody thinks they know.

 

[Miles Teg]

Dude, Miles Tag is gonna jump on your ass, don't you know this isn't an evolution thread?

I was hoping to avoid a thread shift towards creation debate. Since there has been one, let's pursue that.

If the nonreligious people can't prove it (by using a scientific method), the Big Bang -theory is unsubstantiated and thus irrelevant.-------------- see how stupid that kind of post is?

Err, Death Machine, I hate to point this out to you, but they have proven the the Big Bang, by using a scientific method. It's the theory that best fits all available data, and gives the best explanations to phenomena such as cosmic background radiation and the expansion of space. It's not a question of the evidence not disproving it, it's rather that the evidence actually supports it, and becomes less understandable without that context.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but aren't the 2 the same in her case?

Because in this context, one's religious, one's psuedo-scientific.

Before I go on about why I believe in it, how about you show me some examples where it has been disproven.

You're the one claiming that things can't evolve without direct intervention from God. Show me something that couldn't exist in some intermediary form?

 

[Perfection]

I am going to have a bumper sticker that states:

In case of rapture, can I have your Lexus?

People who get raptured don't drive Lexus'

 

[caketastydelish]

Interesting, and wow, seriously, France takes the cake for being the most non-spiritual country out there! No wonder Americans hate the French so much

In general, I think the trends we're reflecting are the demographics about the Internet in general - vast numbers of younger people, and on top of that CFC has a large majority of males. I wouldn't particularly say that CFC is more non-religious than other places on the Internet, or at least similar themed places (take your pick of another gaming site, ie. not something like Myspace). However, as I'm sure many of us realize, we do seem to have an amazingly special mix of people that surpasses anything else I've ever seen on the Internet in general intelligence and attitude. Nowhere else is able to come so close to chasing trolls away and leaving them with no incentive to come back, while we really do have input and serious debate from people with all sorts of beliefs. Though I can see how something like the recent discussion over Fifty "infiltrating" a Christian church can push buttons with some theists

We don't hate the french...

 

[Formaldehyde]

Some of 'us' certainly do - not me though.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Before I go on about why I believe in it, how about you show me some examples where it has been disproven.

That's not how it works I'm afraid and it's a double-standard. Evolution is continuously denied despite the mountain of evidence. When the tables are turned and someone asks a creationist or IDer, same thing, about just a little bit of evidence. Just something. Anything. You get one of two replies:

1. Because evolution doesn't work. (Which is false in my opinion, but even if it were true, it's not evidence for ID or Creationism.)
2. Find me evidence to disprove it.

I would like one tiny piece of positive evidence that points towards an Intelligent Designer. Also, if you ask me, his masterpiece (us humans) are quite flawed and I'd like a word about the design. The Human body is an amazing organism, but it's riddled with bugs.

 

[Camikaze]

Well most of the Theists here generally keep quiet, except on a few occasions, since most of the talk by the Atheists here would raise a lot of in many of the hard hitting Christian forums. Many of us just prefer to talk about the game rather than our beliefs, which is a shame, since we do need to be as vocal as the Atheists on this board. So to speak, get the message out.

That may be the case for some, but not me. I love religious discussions, even though I know I'll be in the minority. It's a good thing to talk about your beliefs, and to discuss them. It's pretty much the only way you can learn and refine them.

You can see that I am the first Theist to speak on here after 25 posts, (at time of writing, just in case it changes during all this typing)

*cough* Post #6 *cough*

Thing is, when discussing religion or atheism, or any other topic for that matter, always try not to attack the person or people who subscribe to a certain way of life. In my opinion it's perfectly fine to criticise and even attack Christianity or Atheism, not Christians or Atheist. Ideas and arguments are free game, no matter how convinced one is about it's truthiness.

This.

What would you expect? What believers hate the most about atheists is that they don't feel so bloody insecure about their views. It's religious people who constantly need to prop each other in their delusions, which is why the natural confidence displayed by the atheists irks them so much.

This doesn't really make any sense. Atheists start almost all of the religious threads on this forum. Atheists are the majority in those threads. If atheists were so nonchalant about their views, by your logic, they wouldn't bother discussing them at all. But obviously that's not the case.

 

[Danielos]

It´s strange that creationists still refer to the fossil record to deny evolution. Darwin himself said that if just one fossil was found at the "wrong place", for example rabbits in Cambrian deposits, the evolutionary theory would fall apart. And yet after all this time, no deviant fossils of that kind have ever been found. The fossil record support evolution, not creation.

Also, while all transitionary stages between all major groups of organisms have not been found (unlikely, since only a tiny fraction of the species that once lived ever fossilized), several transitions such as reptile-mammal, fish-amphibian and dinosaur-bird are well documented.

 

[Yared]

How's that poll coming?

 

[Masada]

That may be the case for some, but not me. I love religious discussions, even though I know I'll be in the minority. It's a good thing to talk about your beliefs, and to discuss them. It's pretty much the only way you can learn and refine them.

Quite. Nevertheless I avoid them because I get mightily offended by the pseudo-science on the theist side and pseudo-history on the atheist side (my list of grievances for both sides is quite substantial). I've seen no evidence to refute the theory of evolution nor have I seen any evidence to prove a historical narrative or an omnipresent struggle between religion and science (and a whole host of other unverifiable accusations). Trying to elucidate on demonstratively inaccurate points bought up by either side is the equivalent of using a brick to crush the last fragile skein of sanity hanging from a low lying tree - something to avoid.

This doesn't really make any sense. Atheists start almost all of the religious threads on this forum. Atheists are the majority in those threads. If atheists were so nonchalant about their views, by your logic, they wouldn't bother discussing them at all. But obviously that's not the case.

Correct.

Thing is, when discussing religion or atheism, or any other topic for that matter, always try not to attack the person or people who subscribe to a certain way of life. In my opinion it's perfectly fine to criticise and even attack Christianity or Atheism, not Christians or Atheist. Ideas and arguments are free game, no matter how convinced one is about it's truthiness.

Does that general rule apply to praise?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Does that general rule apply to praise?

Njet. Don't know a lot of people who get offended by praise.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Why cannot you know? When you say you cannot know, you give up on the concept of rational, scientifically explainable Universe.

Question: can you disprove God in the concrete way that you expect theists to concretely prove his existence? You can't, so the most logical position to take is "I don't believe in God, but I don't discount his existence," since that is absolutely the best you can do with the evidence that can be gathered. To definitively claim a position without definitive evidence supporting it, well, that makes you as "bad" as the theists you so readily deride.

That's not acceptable and it's dangerously close to a religion.

So now prudence = religion?

I find that hypocritical.

You have no clue what that word even means, as your history has demonstrated.

 

[Masada]

Question: can you disprove God in the concrete way that you expect theists to concretely prove his existence? You can't, so the most logical position to take is "I don't believe in God, but I don't discount his existence," since that is absolutely the best you can do with the evidence that can be gathered. To definitively claim a position without definitive evidence supporting it, well, that makes you as "bad" as the theists you so readily deride.

/Thread.

Njet. Don't know a lot of people who get offended by praise.

Liar. I can just see the rage bubbling under those herring like scales you call skin.

The Bible, I was told, is the true word of God. Therefore all of it needs to be taken literally... God doesn't use metaphores, people do whan they can't understand things.

I can't think of a Christian group other than Evangelicals who take all aspects of the Bible literally. In any case Christianity has between 1.5 billion and 2.3 billion adherents in the world, 540 million are Protestant and of those only about a third are "evangelical" in my understanding of the term. That implies that the majority of Christians do not take the Bible literally. It's perhaps best not to buy into Evangelical Propaganda and to simply ignore them.

Yes, and that moderate Christians that choose to interpret some texts literally and others not are pretty hypocritical...

That statement makes no sense. The text wouldn't have literary devices if it was meant to be read literally. If one was to read the text completely literally, the outcomes would be absurd. Take a moment to read the Bible, strip a passage of allegory, historic context including past interpretations and try and draw a literal conclusion from it. It shouldn't really be called literalism, it should be called selective determinism, even Evangelical Christians are quite content to take messages quite distinct from a "literal" interpretation of the text when it suits them. They don't completely eschew the traditional basis for Biblical interpretations, no matter how much they want to they cannot strip meanings which are embedded into the text. It's intellectually bankrupt to read the Bible literally, it's also unusual for Evangelicals to take lessons from anything else, they usually don't read any other historic texts which require anything other than a cursory reading. (Certainly no St. Augustine).

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

A Herring is a beautiful little fish, thanks

 

[Masada]

Herring and the Netherlands go together like fish and pie.