major_chaos said:
brom0220 said:
EDIT: oh wow I fucked up and hit the post button mid sentence
EDIT again: fixed it
first off don't worry nothing you have said came across as hostile or insulting which is unusual for these threads, and in turn hope I don't seem hostile either. second unfortunately no I do not know how to embed videos as for the points of debate:
1. I more or less understand the the big bang theory, it's the what comes before that no one seems to have any explanation for that is any less fantastical than region, but I've never heard of this "M theory" so I will look that up at some point.
2. I haven't heard about protests over school curriculum in a while but I admit that they are a mockery of religion when they do happen. as for people worring about something offending another religion is why they suddenly feel the need to be defenders of a faith they reject? part of is that I don't understand way people get offended so easily anymore, I'm a right-wing conservative christian uber-nerd so naturally I get ridiculed quite often but it never bothers me and I would never want anyone to restrict others for the sake of my ego. I'm not quite sure why you bought up discrimination against islam unless your trying to say that it is because of of other religions which seems like a stretch, it seems more likely that discrimination against islam has to do with fear about terrorism. for my last point I should have clarified that I meant "more pushy atheists than pushy Christians" I am aware that some other religions can be consistently very aggressive and pushy (i.e the Jehovah's witnesses)
3. it seems somewhat contradictory that in the same point you mention the nature of man is evil but then say that man is essentially good and that religion is unnecessary to counter the nature of man instead we can all just decide to be nice, which brings me to an honest question: with nothing but cold logic why should I have any morals? if I rely want to why shouldn't I just go nuts and do whatever I want? there is no consequence for evil all I have to do is kill my self and i get away with no penalty, and if there is no higher purpose for my life it doesn't matter if I end it. the point of that being that I believe that people are unlikely to behave without some threat of higher punishment. I also wonder what these crimes that God needs to be held accountable for are. finally I don't think that the end of current religions would slow down evil people much at all as without and established god to try and bend to their ends they would simply elevate themselves to the position of "god" (happens in many cults)
4. over simplified answer: age, number of believers, the dead sea scrolls, the Biblical creation account being much less like something Disney would come up with, the endurance of the faith under constant threat, other things. I,m not sure what parts of the bible science could possibly disprove except the creation account which many counter with the day-age theory which allows evolution and God to coexist. as for the argument about contradictions in the bible i,m no theologian so its unlike I could directly counter many specific examples you could present but I have had debates with people who are and many of these contradictions actually aren't, part of the problem being that the bible doesn't translate perfectly into common modern languages.
i'll end with a thank you as I actually enjoy debates with people who are reasonable instead of just getting angry when there viewpoint is challenged, which are the types who do more for the other side of the argument that their own
I'm just going to skip number 1, because we can go no further down that road.
2. People sometimes act to protect a faith that they reject for the same reasons straight people sometimes stand up for gay people or for the same reasons anyone stands up for someone different. Sometimes being in the minority sucks. And its not so much that atheists actively reject religion so much as they decide not to take part in it. Doesn't mean they can't respect other peoples religious beliefs. I brought up discrimination against Islam because it illustrates my point about atheists wanting religion kept out of politics. It is due to fears about terrorism, but it is also partially due to the various theocracies that seem to hate America. I didn't mean to imply that other religions were the cause, but there are some Christian churches that seem to hate Islam in principle, like that one in Florida run by the pastor who decided to burn copies of the Koran. Then there are places where people protest the building of mosques. And lets, face it, a lot of religious thinking seems to dominate politics these days.
3. I'm sorry if it seemed like I was implying that humanity is inherently evil. Recent events in my personal life have cost me quite a bit of my faith in humanity and that may have come out in my writing. What I was getting at is that mankind is neither inherently good nor inherently evil. We are at a point in the history of our species where human nature can be decided by humanity itself, through its actions. Basically, man starts off neither good nor evil, man is what he makes himself into. I hope that makes sense, I may not have worded that idea very well.
As for your question, why do you assume that living by nothing but logic alone would make you a self-centered, amoral monster? A lot of the time, the most logical choice is to cooperate and work with your fellow man. Practically all of civilization is testament to the fact that sacrificing what the individual wants for the good of the many is much better than going it alone and doing whatever you want. Have you never had an occasion in your life where you gained more from working with others than you would have if you worked by yourself? Or where sacrificing what you wanted now ensured a better payoff in the future? While some people won't behave without the threat of higher punishment, that punishment does not have to come from God. It can come from society. There are non-religious consequences for evil in the world, that is why we have laws. Rule of Law is sometimes the only form of higher punishment needed, and when it is not up to the job, laws can be changed or updated to fit the times. Morality is a human concept and a human choice, it does not come from God.
As for God's crimes, I take issue with the fact that if he does exist, he decides not to stop certain elements in humanity from causing death and suffering in the world over their varying interpretations of the nature of his existence. He allows extremism to exist because he can't be bothered to drop a line once every hundred years or so to say "Hey, humanity, this is your one true God speaking, just reminding you that I am real and that you shouldn't kill each other over your various interpretations of my will and the nature of my existence. And NEVER kill in my name." Also, consider the amount of faithful who lost their faith due to the actions of extremists going unpunished by God. Those people are going to hell. Further, consider the people who grow up in a region of the world where Christianity has not taken hold. These are people who were raised in a religion other than Christianity and may have never even heard of Christianity in their lives. When you consider that Christianity took time to spread throughout the world from one region, that means that there are entire eras of human history where most of the people of the world went to hell when they died, by virtue of the fact that they were born in an area where Christianity didn't exist yet, so they couldn't accept Christ as their personal savior. Never mind the fact that if Genesis is true, God has decided to punish humanity for the actions of one person who had no concept of right or wrong before she committed the crime of eating from the Tree of Knowledge, which she was tricked into by someone who understood those concepts. Eve would have no idea why obeying God with regards to the Forbidden Fruit would be the right thing to do, because she had no understanding of the concepts of right or wrong to begin with. And God's remedy to punishing all of humanity for this mistake on Eve's part, is to sacrifice His son for humanity, but it only works for those who accept Christ as their savior. So He still gets away with punishing a large part of humanity for the actions of one innocent person, because not everyone will accept Christ, despite the fact that everyone should get a free pass anyway, because God is supposed to be just. Then you think about how God is all-knowing, and thus put the Tree there knowing all of this would happen, knowing how much suffering this would bring the world, knowing how many souls of the human species would burn in eternal torment, and He, despite being all-powerful, loving, benevolent, merciful, and just, set things up this way anyways. For what? His personal amusement? He sets up the world so that bad things can happen to anyone, including His faithful, and even if some of His faithful remain so after a life of non-stop suffering, their reward when they get to Heaven is to spend eternity THANKING that psychopath? Sorry if this sounds hostile, but as I said, morality is a human concept, it does not come from God. Considering all of this, plus what is in the video below, you realize that humanity has the moral high ground.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCovYF51qHE&feature=fvwrel
Sorry about the blunt nature of that video, the guy who makes that website was a Christian for 30 years, and I guess he got fed up from hearing the "Morality comes from God, therefore, Atheists have no Morals" argument.
And sorry if the paragraph above seemed hostile, these are realizations I came to when I started thinking about why I believed in God, and these realizations are what caused me to reject Christianity.
As for there being no purpose in life without religion, why do you assume life must have a purpose? It isn't as though life is meaningless without purpose. Consider this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptwEV0xhTzI&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Sometimes it's not about the Destination (the goal or purpose of life), but the Journey (living life). Man can make his own purpose in life, if he wishes to.
Even if ending religion didn't slow down evil in the world by much, I am starting to think that religion is a self-imposed challenge from humanity's past generations for humanity to become its own moral judge. I hope we can rise to that challenge.
4. I understand that this is an oversimplified argument, but it is an argument that can be applied to pretty much any religion, minus the dead sea scrolls, which I seem to be having a brain-fart about at the moment, as I can't remember what they are (besides scrolls from the Dead Sea) and why they're important. And also minus the creation story sounding less like something Disney could come up with. Disney has made some of the greatest creative works in history, you don't think they could come up with a story about someone speaking the world into existence? I am not a theologian either, and I don't even know any, so there you have the advantage. But there is no scientific evidence of there having been a global flood, so there's one part science can disprove.
I am sorry it took so long for me to respond, classes started this week and my semester is going to be a busy one. Also, I haven't slept in the past 33 hours or so, so I am not running on all cylinders. Some of my ideas may seem unformed or may not make a lot of sense.
I would like to thank YOU for this debate. I also enjoy debates with reasonable people, and this is my first debate on the internet. It has been a good one and has given me some wonderful ideas.
Wow. Man can determine his own nature and his own purpose in life. These are empowering thoughts. I may have just gained a bit of my faith in humanity back.
