tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24996758358238839612024-03-13T11:36:43.323-04:00We gotta love us...I write here for my own enjoyment and expression, but I'd enjoy having readers and feedback. Thanks to anyone who reads and considers my opinions.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-3903992605883090692013-04-04T21:49:00.000-04:002013-04-04T21:49:41.095-04:00Jacob's storyOur favorite fundamentalist scumbag nut job, Eric Hovind wrote <a href="http://www.creationtoday.org/jacobs-story-winter-2012/">this</a> post. It's good to note that in this post, Hovind mentions donations four times, three are explicitly asking for donations. This is just one ~9 paragraph post. <div>
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The fun begins in the first paragraph though. Young Jacob had lived a life of <strike>ignorance</strike> er... Solid Christian teaching, such that he "had never questioned God’s existence. He had no reason to do so." No reason besides general intellectual honesty that is... </div>
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Couldn't the story just end there? Well if it wasn't for the evil indoctrination of the PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM, yes. Unfortunately, we want a society of well informed people, not creationists. (Did I say that?) </div>
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In Jacob's first year in middle school, he learned science. How awful! His teacher had the audacity to teach evolution as scientific fact (which of course it is, but how dare they teach it that way). The post here says the teacher ridiculed the children who asked about creationism, and if that's true, that's poor teaching. But more often than not in these cases, the 'ridicule' is not that of the teacher but that of science. </div>
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On a side note, Jacob is quoted here as saying "My teacher told the whole class evolution was logical and true so we believed her." That's pathetic on so many levels. The quote has an implicit and unwarranted disdain for evolutionary theory, Jacob is pretty much just ready to believe whatever he's told is true (thank that Christian education I mentioned earlier).</div>
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That was just the first paragraph guys.</div>
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I need to quote this, so my apologies...</div>
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“A few months later, I realized I’d peeled away from Christ so I began searching for truth online. And that’s when I saw the Creation Today video on YouTube. As I watched, I learned my teacher’s ‘facts’ did not prove her theory. Thank you so much! I am now a strong believer in Christ!”</div>
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This is a whole load of fail, and here's why. When Jacob "peeled away from Christ", he started "searching for truth online". That implies an assumption that Christ is true/truth. It would be acceptable if he said that he was seeking answers to get a more accurate understanding of the world, but he exposes an intellectually dishonest position in that line.</div>
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If one is searching for truth on the internet, anything to do with Creation Today is probably something that should be avoided. The word 'truth' is loaded, but when discussing scientific matters like evolution, accuracy is a valid term. So if one is looking for accurate information on the internet, it is readily available. It's available in the form of papers and scientific articles by credible people. Hovind is not credible.</div>
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Jacob says that as he watched Creation Today's video, he learned that his "teacher's 'facts'" didn't 'prove' 'her' theory. </div>
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<li>Creation Today is not a credible source.</li>
<li>Those facts are well evidenced.</li>
<li>The facts are part of the theory, not an intended proof of it.</li>
<li>Calling evolution "her theory" is incorrect.</li>
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The next paragraph discusses the SYSTEMATIC INDOCTRINATION OF CHILDREN with evolution and that it supposedly causes people to slip away from Jayzus. </div>
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Hovind writes a line in this that betrays his ignorance very plainly. I quote "When you and I were in school, evolution was presented as theory but now this falsehood is taught as fact." As so many people have pointed out (including directly to Hovind), a theory is a set of facts that explains those facts. As such, a demonstrable theory can be factual. Evolution is both a theory and a fact. It is a theory because it is a compilation of facts that has explanatory and predictive power and it is a fact because it is demonstrable.</div>
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That's shortly followed by something like;</div>
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<b>PLEEZ GIMME MUNEE, I RILLY NEED MUNEE</b></div>
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Some inspiration on how if you just keep your faith strong, you can maintain your ignorance indefinitely...</div>
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Followed again by;</div>
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<b>PLEEZ GIMME MUNEE, I RILLY NEED MUNEE</b></div>
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Hovind puts his signature and title on the post, followed by;</div>
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<b>PLEEZ GIMME MUNEE, I RILLY NEED MUNEE</b></div>
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Thank you, Eric Hovind, for this Gem.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-80318588876709593792013-03-26T00:28:00.000-04:002013-03-26T00:34:36.020-04:00I take offense!I take offense at everyone taking offense at everything. Let's not look the other way, 'offense' is put on a pedestal in society. A pedestal which it does not deserve. This phenomenon hasn't gone unnoticed either. There are a few groups who use the word 'offense' to get the societal knee-jerk reaction of prohibition. <br />
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Of particular note in this practice is the feminist movement, which at this point has the grand role of being whiny. A lot of people have heard of Rebecca Watson and her elevator encounter, fondly termed 'elevatorgate'. In elevatorgate, Watson had been having drinks with some people at a hotel bar. As she was leaving for the night, one of the men she had been drinking with stepped into the elevator with her and told her that he found her interesting and would like to talk more over coffee in his hotel room. As those of you who are familiar with the incident know, Watson proceeded to berate the man on her YouTube channel, SkepChick. That case became more famous than it had any reason to. Why all the fuss? Watson felt like the man was making a move on her and was offended by it. Anita Sarkeesian, another YouTuber who operates under the moniker FeministFrequency, has taken offense to the role of women in some video games. Again, the offense gets a lot more recognition than it deserves. <br />
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Also of note in the practice of manipulating the way in which offense is perceived is the religious community. The religious are offended by homosexual marriage, so instead of not marrying the same gender, they attempt to both lobby and legislate against it. This serves no functional purpose but to interfere in other people's individual lives with no benefit to society. The religious are opposed to stem cell research, clinging to the notion that the evil scientists farm babies to harvest stem cells from. That actual argument is better saved for another post. Most stem cells are found in discarded umbilical cords and more recently, urine. Stem cell research has the potential to increase cancer survival rates by increasing the amount of treatment that can be administered. Stem cell research has been banned essentially since it's advent due mostly to the pressure of influential religious groups. In this instance, offense impedes a benefit to society.<br />
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Only recently, <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/">this incident</a> occurred. Adria Richards effectively destroyed a man's reputation and career on the basis of what may or may not be at least in part a misunderstanding. In the least generous light to the men making these jokes, the jokes were between two people, not meant to be heard by anyone else. Unnecessary offense has serious repercussions. <br />
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In short, offense should not be such a feared thing. Sure, it's also in poor taste to go out and be unnecessarily offensive. I know that if this post is read by the wrong people, it will offend them. I'm perfectly fine with offending people who don't agree as long as I'm offending their opinions, not their persons. As long as I'm offending their ideas. I'll never back down from being honest about a civil opinion just out of fear that someone who disagrees might get their panties in a knot about people disagreeing with them. It offends me how people are so easily offended and more yet, how everyone else tries to skirt around offense in general.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-39070639025240048792012-09-15T01:52:00.000-04:002012-09-15T01:54:05.953-04:00Coming in at the bottom...You have a dirty mind. That sentence was supposed to end with 'of the IQ spectrum.' So, coming in at the bottom if the IQ spectrum is... YouTube's MegaSage007! A self-proclaimed geocentrist, young-earth creationist and intellectual. None of those claims are true. In a discussion I was having with him, he dropped this gem.<br />
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You were born into Bible morality for the obvious reason your Creator has written his Moral Book, and if you insist on deciding what your morals will be from day to day, from situation to situation subjectively - you will serve the Devil and his doctrines including psychology, feminism, heliocentrism, sodomy, abortion on demand, the big bang, abiogenesis, evolution, cosmology, etc and your God given conscience will be ruined by your violating it til you could have no morals at all.<br />
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You just can't make this stuff up!<br />
From the top...<br />
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<li>What is it to be born into Bible morality?</li>
<li>The 'Creator' never put a pen to papyrus.</li>
<li>Having reasoned morality is different from having no morality.</li>
<li>Psychology is an area of study, not a doctrine.</li>
<li>Feminism is a doctrinal worldview in a way. It's more an out-out-control rights group. I'm a secular humanist egalitarian, feminism isn't one of the flags I fly.</li>
<li>Heliocentism... Reality, not a doctrine If you can out-of-hand deny physics, astronomy and your kindergarten education, I guess geocentrism could seem valid.</li>
<li>Sodomy? Who cares how people like to stimulate that nerve?</li>
<li>Abortion on Demand...Actually an issue, but not a doctrine. Before the fetus has developed into a viable organism and is a mere cell mass, I see no problem with disassembling it.</li>
<li>The big bang... Not a doctrine. If you don't take science seriously enough to recognize how the solar system works at an elementary level how do you expect to understand quantum mechanics?</li>
<li>Abiogenesis, a hypothesis, not a doctrine.</li>
<li>Evolution, a theory, not a doctrine.</li>
<li>Cosmology, an area of study, not a doctrine.</li>
<li>etc, probably not doctrines either.</li>
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My God-given conscience? Do we really want to get into conscience numbing events? If we do, the Bible is right there...<br />
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"your God given conscience will be ruined by your violating it til you could have no morals at all."<br />
WHAT...THE...FUCK!<br />
Sure, conscience can be suppressed by certain actions are habits, but that's not a loss of morality. It's a loss of empathy perhaps.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-48540372880837901912012-09-12T12:15:00.000-04:002012-09-14T11:12:46.305-04:00The Three GodsI'm not sure where this originated, but I heard it from Matt Dillahunty.<br />
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Let us assume that there are three gods;</div>
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God 1 exists and manifests in reality.</div>
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God 2 exists, but doesn't manifest in reality.</div>
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God 3 doesn't exist.</div>
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The argument is that God 2 and God 3 are indistinguishable. They are both untestable claims, as there can be no parameters for that which doesn't manifest in reality. So neither God 2 or God 3 can be defined meaningfully without interactions with reality.</div>
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God 1 on the other hand, manifests itself in reality. I'm not admitting the argument that it used to directly manifest in reality, because there is no evidence of it doing so. At any rate, this is a testable claim. If a God 1 manifests in reality, it has a measurable effect on something. The challenge is to determine which something we're discussing. I'll open myself for ridicule and say that there is no measurable effect of any deity. I invite contradiction and correction, please, prove me wrong.</div>
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The end result seems to be that God 1 is nonviable while God 2 is viable, but meaningless. God 3 of course, doesn't exist.</div>
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There are three options;</div>
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<li>There exists a deity which manifests in reality, but masks it's interventions such that it's impossible to verify it, making it look like...</li>
<li>There exists a deity which does not manifest in reality at all, making it look like...</li>
<li>The deity which does not exist.</li>
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Based on that progression, it would seem that an interventionist god is a false and incoherent idea in reality.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-45865303362303625402012-09-02T13:24:00.004-04:002012-09-02T13:26:31.009-04:00The persecution of ChristiansI went to church and other Christian events. The idea that Christians are persecuted in America is alive and well. Look at how right they are too.<br />
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It's illegal for a Christian to hold public office in 6 states.<br />
Even where it is legal, declaring one's self a Christian is political suicide.<br />
There are no/extremely few overtly Christian television or radio channels/programs.<br />
Being a Christian can ostracize an individual from the other 90+% of society.<br />
People are calling for all Christians to leave America.<br />
There has never been an overtly Christian president.<br />
Christians regularly get kicked out of their homes for their religion.<br />
Christians get death threats regularly for nothing but their belief.<br />
Christians are the least trusted group in America.<br />
There are people out to blacklist all Christian-owned companies.<br />
"Christians...should not be considered citizens"<br />
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See all that persecution? Actually...replace Christian with secularist/atheist in each of those.<br />
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We live in a society where being a theist and more specifically a Christian is the norm and accepted default. I'm sorry that your end times pity party doesn't really play out, but this is reality. Religious privilege is alive and well. A legislation can make it to the house which would revoke the rights of any group on a theistic basis. This isn't a new thing. For as long as history can remember, people have been killing, torturing and invading each other based on differences of religion. If humans are to progress as a race, we must abolish this nonsense. Not abolish it with the sword, but with science, reason and evidence. There will always be some people too into their beliefs to let go of them even long enough to take a critical look at them. These people must be tolerated willingly, but eventually we can hope that their influence will diminish.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-1449049173066519202012-08-29T02:48:00.000-04:002012-08-29T02:48:13.403-04:00Cultural idiotsI only partly feel comfortable with calling the religious stupid. That in turn is only partly due to the fact that I was religious. I prefer not to walk around insulting myself in any sincerity, and I know I didn't get smarter as I became more secular. Religiosity in America and other parts of the world is cultural. A lot (I'd be alright with saying a majority) of people believe without properly understanding the foundation of their faith. That can be demonstrated by most religious individuals one is likely to encounter on a day-to-day basis. Many of the religious are also properly ignorant of basic science and replace an argument against a scientific principle with a remark based on their personal incredulity. Philosophy isn't a strong suit with the typical theist or spiritualist, this also can be observed easily when idiotic questions about the evolutionary origin of morality come up. <br />
I do feel comfortable with calling some individual theists idiots if they fit the criteria (and a disproportionate number do), but not simply on account of their religiosity. I feel comfortable calling the theist ignorant, perhaps willfully so. As the title implies however, there are many who fall into either of the significant categories I've mentioned. These are the people who are taught from day one that a belief in some god is the pinnacle of their advancement as a human. I object strongly to that, as the reader may or may not have discovered. Frequently in such cases, critical thought is discouraged*. The individual may be brainwashed all too literally into their belief**. I hazard anyone who is eager to call the believer an idiot merely for their belief to think about everything that goes into keeping a religion alive.<br />
Here's how it worked for me. I was born into a predominantly Christian family. From the time I exited the birth canal (if they waited that long), I was barraged with the baptist and young-earth mantra. I soon picked up on it and got saved when I was 3 years old at a VBS. I evidently don't remember much between then and when I was baptized at 5, a mistake which I may undo for personal and statistical reasons. For some reason my parents saw fit to teach critical thinking along with religion, perhaps in their naivety suspecting that I'd forever hold religion above criticism. I did the exact opposite, holding the opinion that keeping an idea from criticism is an insult to it's integrity. Of course I did so with the express preconception that my particular brand of theism would stand where others so reliably fell. I was ignorant...maybe a bit idiotic. At any rate, I took on the track of 2 years to dismantle the wall of brainwash-fueled ignorance. I'm now 17, going on 18 and an anti-theist. I was very ignorant, but intellect is the capacity rather than the knowledge.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-52951074617068285912012-08-07T02:04:00.002-04:002012-08-07T02:05:40.388-04:00The ten words I often find myself repeating... ...an unhealthy number of times per day. I repeat these words listening to apologists as I flatten my skull with a unique combination of face-other collisions including palm, desk, keyboard and the occasional cat which neither of us appreciate. I find the phrase disappointingly frequently inaccurate though and the more times this occurs, my faith in the human race diminishes almost exponentially. The phrase, of course, is "<b>That's gotta be a gag, nobody is that fucking stupid.</b>". I'll list a few names which will guarantee at least one utterance of this phrase per time they are encountered in any media.<br />
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<li>Hovind, Eric and Kent</li>
<li>Craig, William</li>
<li>Ham, Ken</li>
<li>Sharpton, Al</li>
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There are obviously more, but listing each and every apologist who insists on dragging the bloodied and mangled corpses of their horrendously outdated, outperformed and generally thrown out arguments out (is the word losing meaning yet?) would take years. Honestly it would tire me out. You know I had to use it one more time.<br />
I utter that phrase when I'm reading the ridiculous <i>ICR Science updates</i> which I find myself bombarded with by well-meaning and concerned family members. When I go to a Christian website of any flag, you can bet bank that these ten words surfaced.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-59403513364965820582012-08-03T21:03:00.001-04:002012-08-03T21:05:10.430-04:00Why magic doesn't work 0I have to set a few assumptions to understand anything about the world, here they are.<br />
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<li>This reality exists. The universe, everything in it and the physical laws governing it all exist. This dismounts the "What if you're a brain connected to the matrix?" question. The fact of the matter is that even if we're all scripts in a computer simulation, the computer simulation exists. So reality is contextual to the sentient minds that comprehend it.</li>
<li>Reality is consistent. A reaction based on a given set of variables will produce an exactly similar result when repeated.</li>
<li>We can learn about reality. Because reality is consistent, we can form models with predictive capability.</li>
<li>Models with predictive capability are better than those without it. If reality exists and is consistent, we can learn about it by forming models on the way things behave. If we can form a model on the way something behaves that will explain it and it's likely future behavior, that model necessarily is better than a model on the way something behaves which explains something and has little to no input on what will likely happen. If I mix baking soda and vinegar, I could postulate that some god is offended by the mixing of these ingredients. That tells me nothing about what is happening. On the other hand I could work out the way that acids interact with bases, which not only describes that reaction, but any reaction involving those two categories on any scale.</li>
</ol>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-39004243368691718552012-06-17T19:52:00.000-04:002012-06-17T19:52:06.165-04:00Creation and the fall: Dogmatism at it's finestThe first Bible story is about God speaking the world into existence. Part of that story is how the world was ruined. So let us skip the creation itself. God has put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden. Why did God put the tree there? Good question, I have no answer. Somehow, the devil in the form of a serpent was also in the garden. Why, with all of the earth and better yet, with all the universe to bind the devil in did he pick this planet in that garden? Another question without an answer. <div>
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So when we assume all of this, it is then obvious that evil did not come into the world when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, but when the epitome of evil arrived here. Shouldn't it be then that the world was tainted?</div>
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God commanded Adam and Eve, who at this point have no clue about good and evil to follow a command. This one command, don't eat that fruit... don't even touch it... I'd prefer you don't even look at it... on second thought, don't even think about it. Adam and Eve, being innocent and curious creatures naturally gravitated toward the fruit.</div>
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The only thing which stands between them and the fruit is God's threat. One which seems unfounded without an innate sense of morality. God never told them that to eat the fruit is immoral, and if he did they'd need to have a foundational knowledge of morality. That defeats the purpose.</div>
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So with a dogmatic command to heed, the pair were blissfully ignorant of any moral issue. The serpent presumably knew this and exploited it to it's fullest. He made a counter-offer to God's threat and Adam and Eve took it. They ate the fruit, breaking only an unfounded command. After that all hell (all too literally) broke loose on the earth and the omnescient God who created and planned it all was dismayed.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-82843986705296344182012-05-01T15:36:00.001-04:002012-05-03T01:27:13.799-04:00I do have to jump on this bandwagon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I do certainly want you to listen to the interesting part of this the most... But if you spend too much time listening to the motorcycle, you won't catch the absurdity here...</div>
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1:50 Ok, sounds good. Seriously though, if my position is invalid I would want to know so I could adapt it. Anyway let's get to this ownage here, this intellectual rape of atheism. <br />
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Yaddah yaddah....<br />
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2:58 The atheists were going ballistic because of how atheism contradicts itself? Let's see...<br />
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It is possible that God exists, it's also possible that fairies exist. Please, make your point shock.<br />
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People who assume that no-way-no-how is there a god are perhaps closed-minded, but this isn't a contradiction.<br />
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Most rational people will concede that there is the possibility of pretty much anything, however remote. The term tooth-fairy-agnostic is what most rational atheists know themselves as. The outright rejection of any idea is irrational, but again, not a contradiction.<br />
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It's not an Achilles heel, it's a disagreement.<br />
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Not believing in a god and believing there is certainly no god are not mutually exclusive. I could not believe in god and adamantly believe that there certainly is no god, but I could not think highly of myself for doing so.<br />
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4:24 That's a random point. Christians need to believe in God to be Christians, so?<br />
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5:20 Here we go again...<br />
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If the atheist states affirmatively and certainly that there is no supernatural, shock at least has arrogance and irrationality to use again him/her.<br />
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If the atheist states that a god is possible, they have lost no ground. They'd no be arguing against themselves, I return to fairies. Fairies are possible, yet I'd argue against anyone that they don't exist. Why? Lack of evidence. I do not contradict myself in saying that.<br />
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It doesn't embarrass me to say that a god or gods are possible. Science is always trying to learn, thus we cannot dismiss something out of sheer improbability. I ask the reader, can you imagine all of the technology we would not currently have were we to have dismissed it as impossible due to lack of knowledge? Everything! Everything would have been ignored. That's the argument I hear from the other side of the argument, ignorance seems key.<br />
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7:09-9:58 Maybe this one will be good?<br />
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Sure, parts of the Bible are "true"... Some of the social, geographical observations line up and the like... I could write a book with true parts too, but in it's whole it could still be crazy. Oh no! He's got me now!<br />
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"Then you could say"Which parts of it [the Bible] are not true?" and you could expand it." So admitting that Israel is a real country and place and that the other nations in the Bible existed is tantamount to accepting it's entirety? That's the epitome of logical FAIL.<br />
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There's actually no proof that Jesus ever did exist, nor any proof beyond that that he was divine (other than the Bible). So you got him...how? Ok, Lord of the Rings time. Gandalf is real folks! Because PARTS of the Lord of the Rings are true... Sword fighting, ranged weaponry, mining industry... It must all be real! Thanks, shock for clearing that up.<br />
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I couldn't hope to defend that atheists never lie, but that doesn't prove shit about atheism being full of "crapola"(see what I did there). In the same fashion, Christians lie. Does that inherently make Christianity full of crap? Well...no, that specifically doesn't.<br />
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10:00-12:18 Objective moral values... Like the (original) ten commandments, half of which (besides the insecure desert deity ones at the beginning) God either broke or commanded their breaking? Let's take a look.<br />
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Honor thou parents...or be stoned. (Deut 21:18-21)<br />
Well in Luke 12:53 "The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law."<br />
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Thou shalt not kill...unless you're god, then genocide is all in a day's work (old testament).<br />
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Thou shalt not FUCK unless thou hast the paperwork for it.<br />
Adam and Eve couldn't have been married, but we can let that slide. How about when God tells the Israelite army that they can rape the virgins of the Midianites. Numbers 31:18 "But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."<br />
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Thou shalt not take shit which is not thine...unless you're God.<br />
Looting villages, stealing their women, livestock and possessions.<br />
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Thou shalt nor bear false witness against thy neighbor.<br />
God telling Moses to lie to Pharaoh counts I assume? Exodus 3:17&18<br />
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Thou shalt not WANT shit which is not thine.<br />
So the "promised land" inhabited by several other tribes? Hmm...<br />
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Anyway, back to objective morality.<br />
<br />
I personally don't know if there is objective morality. I'm inclined to say no, the needs of the many (without special circumstances) outweigh the needs of the one/few. I won't go so far as to say that the ends justify the means, because it's too general. I think morality is a societal construct and is neither absolute nor entirely fluid. Some things are just wrong, but I also think that it is possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason. By saying that I don't mean to contradict myself, more to state an "All is well what ends well" sort of mentality. And my definition of "ends well" is rather firm.<br />
<br />
I like the sneer with which shock says "He's like a socialist I guess." Not appealing to any particular group there, are we...Oh, wait that's a direct appeal to the Christian right! <br />
<br />
The flaw with the starving family argument here is that there would be an impact. Stealing money would impact the boss and make HIS family starve. Don't want to go slippery slope all the way here, but there could be an effect. Theft is normally wrong. Let's say though that a catastrophe has occurred and there are limited supplies of food for a population. One person is hoarding those supplies and effectively not letting anyone else have any. I think it would be morally acceptable to steal enough food to make it by on, assuming the one person also has enough. I think that socialism (sneer) would be the best way to run that.<br />
<br />
12:18 Suffering in the world is a problem for the theist, but it seems in the video tied in with objective morality more than I can think it is in practice.<br />
<br />
"Premise 1: If God existed...then we would not see suffering in the world.<br />
<br />
Premise 2: There is suffering.<br />
<br />
The conclusion they try to make is therefore God doesn't exist."<br />
<br />
The way that goes is more like this...<br />
<br />
Premise 1: If God were omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omni-benevolent, there would be no suffering in the world.<br />
<br />
Premise 2: There is suffering in the world.<br />
<br />
Conclusion: God is not omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omni-benevolent.<br />
<br />
Conclusion 2: Since the Christian God has to be all of these things, we can reasonably rule him out.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
I am starting to think that shockofgod is the best person I've encountered at setting up straw men. He does it so fast and easily that it's tempting to pass right over them and accept his conclusion.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
You're going to bring Job up, really? That was a bet. God and the devil made a bet and Job's stuff was the collateral damage. That is not a kind or just thing to do.<br />
<br />
I'll just drag through this part... Actually, we look at death as a disease. One that may eventually be cured or put off anyway. There's another straw man.<br />
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I live a life with purpose, without God. My purpose is to be intellectual. I'd rather have a lifespan of knowledge now than an eternity of kissing God's holy ass. If the first option is unavailable, as shock demonstrates nicely...the second may be worth while anyway. That's for a later post though.<br />
<br />
The purpose of atheism is to tell "you" that "you" have no purpose? On the contrary! It's to be truthful and intellectually honest, to discover. There's yet another straw man.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-77452253403554507162012-04-30T23:30:00.000-04:002012-04-30T23:30:00.398-04:00Design?I do believe I've written on this before, but I will again.<br />
<br />
Position of the earth. A creationist will claim that the universe was designed for us because of the position of the earth. There are billions of galaxies, with at least trillions of stars/planets/moons in each. How vain is humanity to suggest that it's all here for us? So back to the position of the earth, which is perfect for life. The earth is really a harsh environment for life. We only do so well because we adapt and more yet, we adapt our environment. The earth isn't naturally a good place for human life.<br />
Now, more literally on the celestial position of the earth and less on the planet itself. There are billions of galaxies with trillions or quadrillions of celestial bodies in each to my knowledge. Now think of earth as a candidate planet as I will call it. A candidate planet is one which has the requirements to support life in a given form. Keep in mind as well that this is based only on our carbon-based life and there may be many different kinds. Can it be rationalized that earth is the only candidate planet in the universe/multiverse? No, we can't rationalize that. There can be so many candidate planets, not all of which will produce life. What we wind up with is a grand dice roll. We seem to have won that roll.<br />
Nature... Can we call this cruel system designed? Why would a designer make a prey animal fast, only to make the predator as fast or failing that, sneaky? There's no clear reason why. Natural selection has survival to account for on both sides. But a designer has no motivation to make such a cruel game unless the designer is a sadistic bastard, to be polite.<br />
What evidence even suggests design? Almost every science points to a materialistic origin. I've come to the conclusion that either I am completely and horribly ignorant or there isn't much backing it up really.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-8955856734756179882012-04-29T22:00:00.000-04:002012-05-03T01:29:37.331-04:00God and free will God makes a race to worship and serve him. He gives us free will. He commands us to act a specific way, but makes doing so impossible. When we fail to act this way, we're supposedly punished. Not only slap-on-the-wrist sort of punishment either, eternal torture. <br />
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Say I write a computer program, I write it to complete an equation. I then give it several different types of equations to solve and expect it to always have the same result. My analogy fails when we come to punishment, because nothing is less just than infinite punishment for finite crime. The worst person who ever lived or will live could not possibly deserve that.</div>
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So we've got the celestial "screw you" down. Let's talk about God's plan for us. God is supposed to have this divine plan for each of our lives. That is not possible if we have free will. Imagine you are commanding an army. The catch is, none of your soldiers follow orders unless it suits their personal agenda. Can you imagine commanding a free-willed army? The only thing which holds a plan involving multiple people together is knowledge of how they will act. If they change what they are to do, they can endanger the entire plan and screw it up completely. The typical counter-argument to this is that God can work all things that happen into his plan. The problem is that it's still a plan, which requires manipulation of at least several elements.</div>
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Next, divine intervention. Some people think God intervenes on a daily basis for them. If God saves parking spaces and the like for the individual like some believe, he must deprive another of that parking space. The other person would have to be swayed divinely to park somewhere else or not make that particular stop. What does that do to free will? I suppose God would have to make them want to not stop or not park there so that they'd freely choose to avoid it, but can that be considered free choice? The educated person cannot believe in both the divine and free will simultaneously. </div>
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A friend of mine recently posted on facebook "If I had a time machine, I would go back to the Precambrian, throw a pebble in the ocean, and then fast forward to the present to see how much had changed.". The result in this experiment could be catastrophic, or it could have almost no effect. In the same way every time God meddles, he disrupts the entire natural order. When he does that he could change almost everything and what does that say about free will?</div>
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As a Christian, there can be no free will. Without free will we're not responsible for our actions. That removes sin, making us sinless. We'd have no need for God to "save" us. No hell to punish us for the sin. If one argues that we're still responsible without free will then God is a tyrant (which is a notion I wouldn't be above, I derive great pleasure from knowing that he doesn't exist).</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-86073937646805512652012-04-28T21:00:00.000-04:002012-04-28T21:00:04.868-04:00Argument from design - Teleological argument The first error is in assuming that natural selection is a random unguided process. Nothing could be further from the truth. Natural selection is the filling of a need via necessity. Let's look at a few examples;<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Foals can walk and nurse within an hour of being born, can trot and canter within several hours and can gallop within a day. They need this ability to be able to move away from predators. This ability can be confidently suggested to be rooted in natural selection. A horse which is born and has to sit around for days will be killed more easily than a quickly mobile one. That causes the more mobile horse to be more likely to pass along it's genes and as a result eventually cause horses in general to be able to move faster after birth.</li>
<li>Let's look at a predator. Cheetahs are a rather optimized predator. They are stealthy, accurate, fast and deadly. These abilities came when the cheetah was hunting prey animals and I'll use gazelles as an example. The gazelle is fast and can turn in an instant. To be able to hunt and kill a gazelle the cheetah must be able to move very fast after stealthily hunting. Any cheetahs which didn't have these traits wouldn't as easily catch their prey and would find survival and thus reproduction hard to sustain.</li>
<li>The crocodile looks rather like a log to the unsuspecting creature. It sits still and watches until a creature wanders past or comes to drink and launches itself at the animal. It then often drags the creature underwater, drowning it and allowing the crocodile to eat it's prey at leisure. These traits have solid roots also in natural selection. </li>
</ol>
Chance is involved in the mutation used in evolution and defined by natural selection. Take a boggle game and decide on a configuration you'd like to see. The first thing you need to do is make sure that your dice have all of the sides required, if they don't, your metaphorical species will go extinct. So assuming that you picked a possible combination, let's begin. Each time a dice falls in the correct position, have it not change any more. You'll find that eventually through dice rolls you get an incredibly unlikely configuration which for all intents and purposes would be nearly impossible to come to through chance. Now think of each dice as a trait in a genome or a phenotype. When one of them is beneficial, it goes on to be reproduced. That's the dice you keep. To take the boggle analogy to another level you could land the wrong dice on the right trait and by doing that lose the potential for another trait you need. This has a couple of possible results. The first is that your species cannot survive. The second is that your species has to make another change.<br />
Let's take the native's watch. The native living in a primitive culture finds a watch on a beach, he doesn't know what it is, but he knows that it was designed. The watch is correlated with the universe and us with the native. Theists will take that to prove God. The problem is that the watch has clear markings on it which indicate design, and that watches are to my knowledge only ever created by humans. If I, right now found a machine with effects beyond our current level I would have to postulate a more advanced person than myself. The tribesman, were he wise could do the same. We should not aspire to be the ignorant tribesman, we don't see the clear markings of design (later post more based on lack of design).Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-69629074079358660532012-04-27T22:50:00.000-04:002012-04-28T15:29:13.274-04:00IDiots ID of course, being the "Cheap tuxedo" of creationism, trying to make it sound vaguely scientific by coining the term "Intelligent Design", often amended with the word 'theory'. This is insane for a few reasons.<br />
The most obvious reason is that ID isn't a theory. It would be lucky to attain hypothesis status. For a suggestion to become a hypothesis, it must be testable by the scientific method. Creationism is not testable by the scientific method. Evidence cannot be found which points to creationism, and evidence is key to the scientific method.<br />
At this point, the ID postulation is laughed out of the academic arena. There's no historical, natural or philosophical evidence for ID. The natural evidence which we have points to the earth being about 4.5 billion years old. The historical evidence we have suggests naturalistic and materialist origin. Lastly out of those three, our current philosophy correlates us nicely with evolved animals based on instinct. This makes evolution and the big bang theories which to date survive the academic arena as opposed to ID, whose bloodied corpse is dragged out of the academic arena.<br />
To merely try to rename young earth ideology to make it sound scientific is dishonest. There's no way to prove young earth theory, we have many dating methods which place the earth at 4.5 billion years. There's no mistake here, no "Oops, turns out that the earth was only 6,000-8,000 years old.". It's just so improbable at this point. Young earth ideology is now entirely kept alive by the willfully ignorant, a Google search is a way to disprove that in under 10 seconds.<br />
<br />
If a person manages to believe in ID, they have an Olympic level of ignorance, and to call them IDiots is fair.<br />
<br />
“Five percent of the people think; <br />
ten percent of the people think they think; <br />
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” <br />
― Thomas A. Edison<br />
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“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” <br />
― Benjamin Franklin<br />
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“One of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.” <br />
― Richard Dawkins<br />
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-75341126335877977002012-04-26T23:00:00.000-04:002012-04-28T03:18:08.014-04:00Have gay sex to improve chance of rapture!Luke 17:34-35<br />
I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.<br />
<br />
Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.<br />
<br />
To be fair, in the NIV they added "grain" to that second sentence. Also in the NIV, they substituted "men" for "people". Because whatever happens, the Bible can't sound gay...at all!<br />
<br />
This is a mostly jovial post. Just saying, go gays and lesbians! Even if you're atheists, you've got a 50/50 of being included in the rapture, the Bible says so.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-31361830618455064052012-04-25T22:58:00.000-04:002012-04-25T22:58:17.188-04:00Why is this real? Why do people still try to use the cosmological argument? Let's take a look at it.<br />
<br />
Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.<br />
<br />
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.<br />
<br />
Conclusion: The universe has a cause.<br />
<br />
Conclusion 2: The cause for the universe must be an uncaused cause, which is God.<br />
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So special pleading aside... Let's prove that you and I mean YOU can fly using this argument.<br />
<br />
Premise 1: You are a mammal.<br />
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Premise 2: Bats are mammals.<br />
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Premise 3: Bats can fly.<br />
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Conclusion: Mammals can fly.<br />
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Conclusion 2: You, as a mammal, can fly independently.<br />
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All of my premises are correct, demonstrably so. My conclusion, like the cosmological argument's conclusion is false. A major difference between the two is that I don't invoke special pleading.<br />
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I know I've posted on this previously, but come on. The logical fallacies should have people who use this argument weeping uncontrollably in corners. Yet people use this argument proudly even now. It diminishes my already very slight faith in humanity.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-60487930984884016722012-04-24T23:43:00.002-04:002012-04-24T23:43:38.972-04:00It's the devil! I was informed today by a Christian that mental illness is demon possession. In fact, most everything Christians don't like can be traced back to devils. Isn't that convenient? Rather obviously, there are no demons at all. This was specifically in relation to the book <i>Extreme Evil: Kids Killing Kids </i>which has to do with school killings and how they're rooted in demonic activity. Again, this is patently ridiculous.<br />
We can forget psychology and physiology, it's all the demons. If the Christian is willing to back into the "medical symptoms are the effects of the demon" corner, there's no real argument to be had. There's no argument because when someone is willing to concede any hope of evidence in favor of unfounded claims of causality, there's no way to make any progress.<br />
People tried blaming everything we didn't understand or like on demons, it set science back and cost thousands of innocent lives. That people would take this dark-ages mentality into the 21st century disgusts me. The outright rejection of science in favor of superstition is so terribly harmful in so very many ways. There should never be a conflict here, yet the majority of America is still in the dark ages.<br />
Anything which is beyond testing and observation should immediately raise a flag of warning. This includes all things spiritual. It's a shame that so many theists are advocates of the unfalsifiable hypothesis, it greatly inhibits my ability to learn from and talk to them.<br />
<br />
The same Christian who went off on the devil thing is a conspiracy theorist (go figure), but oddly enough he also thinks governments are incompetent. The two are mutually exclusive. To plan a conspiracy and have almost no people know about it, a person or group must be incredibly prepared, organized and intelligent. An incompetent person or group would never manage to pull off such an elaborate plan.<br />
At any rate, he submits on a regular basis the One-World-Government idea*. He says it's forming now, and that the devil is behind it. There are so many reasons why this is improbable, here are a few;<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>So many governments don't like each other and couldn't merge peacefully.</li>
<li>Many people would protest the idea and anarchy wouldn't be a ridiculous assumption.</li>
<li>Religions of all colors which make up almost all of the world wouldn't let it happen.</li>
<li>There are no real advantages to it.</li>
</ol>
Those are a few of many points against One-World-Government. Another, which is just an appeal to reason is that the theory is from Revelations. As I've said previously "When Paul wrote Revelations he was either using symbolism or hallucinogens, I normally opt for the latter suggestion.". <br />
<br />
Next, he decried Wicca as Satanism. He wasn't talking about the mainstream Satanism either, more the "Kill cute puppies, small children and anyone who annoys you" version, or put more simply, the bastardized Christian version of Satanism. Wicca has a karma system...On steroids. The law of three as it is called states that any energy one puts out into the world will come back threefold to bite them in the ass. Wicca has a requirement for the respect of free will and offers cosmic punishment for those who disregard free will. The semi-famous Wiccan's creed "An ye harm none do what ye will" shows the awful, evil, violent nature of Wicca, except oh wait IT'S ALL BUT THE DAMNED GOLDEN RULE!<br />
<br />
I mentioned Satanism in the past paragraph. The version I stated was as I said, bastardized. Satanism is essentially religious libertarianism. There are rules of Satanism saying that harming animals and children is wrong. I'd go further to say that harming anyone who isn't trying to harm anyone is wrong in most cases, but it's still not the kitten-blood-drinking, bonfire-lighting, demon-summoning ideology which people assume. Most of the cases which the author of <i>Extreme Evil: Kids Killing Kids</i> gives in his promotional video are high-school related, naturally. The problem is the factor of rebellion in high school, an angry child will reach for what they perceive to be the darkest thing out there to impress their peers and annoy authority. Some times there's more to it, but to entirely discount rebellion as a cause of this is disingenuous.<br />
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*I don't grace it with calling it a theory, even as far as conspiracy theories go.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-16504554596719570172012-04-18T02:01:00.000-04:002012-04-18T02:01:15.848-04:00Shining intellect of YouTube 1<b>Person 1</b>: Glad to see "good" Christians rejoice in the death of a man [Christopher Hitchens] who rose up and challenged their beliefs. And they wonder why people take their "loving" stance with a grain of salt<br />
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<b>Person 2</b>: We rejoiced over the death of Bin Laden as well. As I'm sure YOU did as well.<br />
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<b>Me</b>: I saw killing him as a necessary evil. It's not something to rejoice over.<br />
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<b>Person 2</b>: So in the Old Testament when thousands were killed in the name of religion, could that be considered a "necessary evil" as well?? LMAO You atheists can't have it both ways.<br />
<br />
<b>Me</b>: Far from it. Most of the people killed in the old testament were innocent. Bin Laden was an international threat. You're right we can't have it both ways, that's why I only take one. If someone needs to die to save a lot of people, it's sometimes the right thing to do. Many of the people killed in the old testament were peaceful. Infants were massacred. Women were raped. All this because God was pissed. How dare you make this comparison?<br />
<br />
<b>Person 2</b>: Ok, YOU know that they were innocent. I didn't realize you were there. NONE are innocent. ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Maybe if you knew scripture you would know this already. If you're going to make omelette, you have to crack some eggs. Stop being a pussy<br />
<br />
<b>Me</b>: Of course, I'm talking from a materialist standpoint. I don't think that we're all innately evil. It's not that I don't know what the Bible says, it's that I think it's hooey (with all due respect). The problem I have with God's old testament "omelette" is that he had to crack almost 25 million "eggs". I'm not being a pussy as you so crudely assert. If you were told by "God" to wipe a city which wasn't harming anyone off the map, would you be eager to do so? You gotta make the omelette!<br />
<br />
<b>Person 2</b>: We all all born in sin because of the fall of man. Hooey or not, that's we we have to be Born Again. And PLEASE don't spout numbers when you are totally ignorant on the Bible. There were not 25 million people on the PLANET in the old Testament. Only 2% of human life existed before Jesus, 2000 years ago. And God would not tell me to wipe out a city that wasn't harming anyone. He wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah because of sexual immorality.<br />
<br />
<b>Me</b>: Again, I don't believe in the born evil theory. Your wording "hooey or not" is all-encompassing and therefore ridiculous. Think of pre-flood population. The species would have had 120,000 years + to populate. 25 million is a conservative estimate taking into account other catastrophic events. 2% of human life before Jesus, who may or may not have even existed. 2% assumes young earth theory, which is ridiculed in the scientific community.<br />
<br />
<b>Me</b>: If you're ignorant enough to think that Sodom and Gomorrah were the only cities wiped out, you may be a lost case. Sexual immorality (in this case homosexuality), so? The children and infants were sexually immoral assuming that homosexuality is immoral (and it's not)? Numbers 31:7-18 details the genocide and rape of the Midianites, ordered by God. What were the Midianites doing? What made the virgins deserve to be raped and forced to marry? You try to defend this?<br />
<br />
<b>Person 2</b>: You must be GAY<br />
<br />
<b>Me</b>: Well that's intellectually stimulating. Funny how you back down to such unfounded claims in the face of an argument.<br /><br />I'm not gay, but if I were I don't think I should have a problem with it.<br /><br />Homophobia is on par with racism, it's hating a trait about someone which they have minimal to no control over.<br /><br />Religion has been oppressing all sexuality since the dawn of time.<br /><br />Sex is an amazing recreational activity and there's no reason to reserve it for procreation.<br /><br />Good job there.<br />
<br />
<b>Person 2</b>: Sex is for PROcreation not Recreation. Hey MORON? If you take that attitude, then Pedophilia is OK right?? Wouldn't discriminating against them be ON PAR with racism?? After all, you said sex is an amazing RECREATIONAL activity. right? You DUMB FUCK!<br />
<br />
<b>Me</b>: First, that's prudish and unnecessary.<br />
<br />Me? Yes? [In reference to "Hey MORON?" not a separate post in case it matters...]<br /><br />No, pedophilia cannot be compared to consensual sex between two adults. I knew this would come up, but there's only so much to say in 500 characters.<br /><br />That's exactly what I meant to say, discriminating against homosexuals is on par with racism.<br /><br />Sex is an amazing recreational activity. It's good psychologically and physically. Sex relaxes people, which could go to partially explain your tense state.<br />
<br />
<b>Person 2</b>: Discriminating against pedophilia is the same as gays. There is NO way you can defend what you said without defending ANY kind of sexual perversion. THUS, you don't have time.. LOL<br />
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<b>Me</b>: The problem you run into comparing pedophilia with homosexuality is that homosexuality is almost perfectly harmless under consensual conditions. Pedophilia is as close to constantly mentally and physically devastating as can be assumed.<br /><br />Your comparison is like comparing the sport of boxing to murder. One is done by athletes and the other is done by thugs. One is legitimate and the other is vile.<br /><br />I don't have... Time? What?<br />
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<b>---</b><br />
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I wish I were joking, or that I had written all parts for comedic value. But this again, is YouTube's finest.<br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-53475904879258893132012-04-18T00:47:00.000-04:002012-04-18T01:35:57.174-04:00My story and why I'm a tooth fairy agnostic We'd just moved to Farmington, Maine and I was three and a half years old. I was brought to VBS (vacation bible school) along with regular church attendance. During one of the 'Love God or burn!' speeches, I weighed my options in my immature brain and decided on the former. That was the start of my mentally slow life. I was indoctrinated since birth with religion and never even heard of evolution until (to the best of my memory) I was about 10. The indoctrination which I suitably call brainwashing haunted me for a very long time, but we'll get to that later.<br />
At any rate, when I was about 10 I heard of evolution in Sunday school. I heard it being ridiculed by some apologist whose name escapes me. There was a video series on why evolution is false which lasted around 8 weeks. The apologist was bad enough at making a case that I'd have assumed it to be William Lane Craig, but for the fact that I recall him to at least have a good manner. Several more series occurred before I turned 15 and learned skepticism, rational thought and the scientific method.<br />
I was a rabid young earth creationist. I'm not ashamed of that, but for the merciless haranguing of one of my friends. I'm not sure exactly how old he was when we met, but we discussed philosophy, religion and evolution. I constantly spewed logical fallacies which I'd learned from the video apologists and various other thing my parents introduced me to. I had a fortress of willful ignorance which no reason could lay siege to.<br />
My faith in God was always fairly strong, it was the only idea ever posed to me as valid. I'd step outside on a summer morning and feel God all around me. I'd look at mountains, rivers, trees, animals... And see God in all of them. What I never realized is that what I was seeing and feeling was an idea, not a reality. It's trivially easy to slap the 'magic' label on everything and feel very satisfied when one's intellect is retained by religion.<br />
The tide started to change when I got to be about 15. I couldn't see God everywhere and I couldn't feel him. This was a result of several things including reading the Bible, skepticism and an actual realization that not every other theory was absolute rubbish inherently.<br />
I gave up Christianity temporarily to try other religions. I looked at Wicca, mostly because magic is interesting. When I realized that Wicca is a re-branding of any religion, I had to give it up too. Wicca is based on asking spirits for favors, like prayer. The difference is that these spirits in Wicca don't require your eternal devotion and love, they want trinkets and sacrifice. Thinking again, I was thinking of it more like a new age spiritualism than the ancient Paganism which it is based upon.<br />
The next step along this journey was at least in the right direction. I looked at Buddhism and rather liked it. The philosophy in Buddhism is amazingly interesting, which it to it's credit as Buddhism is more a life philosophy than a proper religion. That's why I eventually moved away from it, after learning some philosophy. I found that I could borrow Buddhist philosophy without the pseudo-religious hooey.<br />
I tried briefly before and in between these to invent my own metaphysical ideas. Mine was an omni-theistic philosophy in which nothing is to be worshiped, but everything is to be considered and heard out. Everything had the potential to be great and the answer to almost any question. While this decision obsoleted religious worship as most religions would have it, it was still ignorant. I quote Richard Dawkins "Let us be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains fall out.". That idea put the last nail in the coffin of my ideology.<br />
Throughout all of this transition I couldn't feel any enlightenment because all of the brainwashing from my young life was tormenting me mentally. I spent all of my time thinking philosophically and scientifically. To be fair, I don't regret this at all. In the end it was rather worth the misery of the year-and-a-half it endured. Despite that I shouldn't have had to endure it. I walked away from that on this side a more rational person.<br />
From there, it was a quick trip from the faint belief I had left to Agnosticism to what is well termed 'Tooth Fairy Agnosticism'. TFA is essentially atheism, which I normally identify as. TFA allows for scientific possibility, against all odds. I put God's existence on par in terms of likelihood with the tooth fairy or werewolves. All of those are technically unfalsifiable, but horribly unlikely. I'm tempted to call myself a Tooth Fairy Atheist, because that implies the improbability of God. However creationists tend to consider Atheism an absolute claim, and for lack of better material they argue it.<br />
Atheism is probably the most wonderful ideology out there. It allows me to fully appreciate the wonders of the universe without having to blame magic for it all. It allows science to be influential instead of dismissed merely because it disagrees with an ancient text written in the desert by barbarians in the bronze age. It allows reason, which cannot be adequately replaced by 'Because God said so.'. Philosophy can be meaningful because we don't have to discard ideas which infringe upon a god. We can understand origins without worrying about pissing off the almighty.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-54907938339255959852012-04-17T03:49:00.000-04:002012-04-17T03:49:25.238-04:00This finely tuned universe we live inThis is a finely tuned universe.<br />
^not<br />
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Let's talk about probability. Imagine that you see a shooting star. What are the odds that it would fall right then, where it was? What are the odds that you'd be there to witness it? What are the odds that it would happen at all? I wouldn't be of an inclination to point to the sky and say "There! There will be a shooting star at x time in this location." and bet on it. The odds are (no pun intended) astronomical. <br />
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For another analogy, a shorter one to your relief. Image you've got a dice which has pseudo-infinite sides. Those are the odds of a planet in the space to support life, with all conditions given. The odds are 1 in pseudo-infinite. If the dice misses the mark, the life-supporting planet does not happen and no one is there to contemplate it.<br />
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Now I move on a bit. In dismantling a creationist argument, I'll use the Bible (talk about ballsy). Take the parable of the sower. The number of seeds is the number of "candidate" planets for life in my analogy. Those odds are in error, because several dump trucks (or more) full of incredibly small seeds would be required for the odds to be correct. Anyway the seeds which are sown in inhospitable environments die, the same with the "candidate" planets. Then there's the one (group) of seeds which lands in the right place, there's a "candidate" planet which winds up in the right place.<br />
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A candidate planet would be one with the chemicals needed for life. It would require an atmosphere. It would require to be the correct distance from a star. These are but some of the requirements for any planet which could support a carbon-based life form.<br />
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There are only a few place on earth which are naturally suited to human life. I live in Maine, annually we get a fair bit of snow. It would be a harsh environment for humans to survive in. Several people each year die in the snow. If a god made this planet for life, it did a poor job of it. <br />
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That's all only on our planet. As has been flouted by many people, the Andromeda galaxy is moving toward our own and will collide with ours in about 4.5 billion years. If that's finely tuned, then the god is malevolent.<br />
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The one problem we in the educate- I mean, secular community have is the origin of life. The difference however is that we're not interested in just slapping a 'magic' label on everything which we don't understand. Imagine where science would be without skeptics - it wouldn't be.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-40384320506804696112012-04-17T02:50:00.000-04:002012-04-17T02:50:00.012-04:00The horrible oppression of Christians in the U.S.I was always told about how Christians are prosecuted and oppressed worldwide, and they are in some places. But I was told that they are in the U.S., what a ridiculous notion. The 76% of adult Americans who are Christians as of 2008 feel oppressed by the awful 14% who disagrees. I'd love to make note of the fact that also in 2008, the secular movement atheists and agnostics COMBINED. The secular movement which so horribly influences the fine institution of religion. The secular movement which is corrupting children. Again I say combined, Atheists and Agnostics account for 1.6% of the American adult population. Let's put it in terms of geography.<br />
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1.6% Atheist/Agnostic<br />
74% Christian<br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">The population of the united states also as of 2008 was about 304,375,000. Which tells;</span><br />
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<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">4,870,000 People Atheist/Agnostic</span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">225,237,500 Christians</span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">That's approximately 46:1 Christians to Secularists. Now for the geography part.</span><br />
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<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">The U.S. is 3,717,813 square miles of which 3,536,294 square miles are land. You can see where this is going.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">63.7 Christians per square mile on average.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">1.4 Atheists/Agnostics per square mile on average.</span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">These numbers are rounded. By state as of 2010(and this won't work out perfectly due to the two-year gap in population data);</span><br />
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<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">California-37,253,956 (27,567,927 Christians, 596,063 Secularists)</span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">That is </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">more secularists than the entire population of Wyoming. </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">Forty</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">-nine times the number of Christians to the population of Wyoming. </span><br />
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<span style="text-align: -webkit-right;">Let us now assume that somehow religion is being oppressed despite the majority. I'm sorry... I just can't see how they could even make this claim.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-56101602531066612562012-04-16T02:31:00.000-04:002012-06-18T19:33:17.259-04:00Then why are there still monkeys?Were we descended from monkeys I'd agree with this. Fortunately I've never heard anyone with a suitable education on the matter make that claim. In my discussions with creationists I've tried my best to persuade them of common ancestry, but never to much avail. Most creationists have it drilled into their heads by fellow creationists and creationist apologists (who should know better). My point for now is the ignorant question "If we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?". The answer which I touched on earlier is that we evolved from a common ancestor with monkeys. We're closest in relation to the great apes, having 23 pairs of chromosomes to their 24. Not only are our chromosome pairs so similar in number, but our 23rd chromosome is identical to the great apes' 23rd and 24th chromosomes fused together.<br />
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I do sincerely hope that I am wrong when I postulate that this defense is an intentional ignorance. I rather would hope that education is possible, but my results in personal discussion have been rather distressing. Some of the apologists, as I mentioned earlier should know this. The people in the church should know this, but more on that later. I cannot claim to be fully educated, with currently an incomplete college education but that should attest to the ignorance of this argument.<br />
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When I used to go to church, I watched a video series based on the fallacious nature of evolution. Needless to say that the video series was quite disingenuous. It had a tendency toward circular logic which disgusted me and pleased the teachers of the class.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-32140404571680945212012-04-15T02:27:00.001-04:002012-04-15T02:27:15.648-04:00You know there's a problem...You know there's a problem when the better part of society respects ignorance over education. The excuse is faith and it's sort of like the matrix. The more you can disbelieve, the better you are. To have faith in God, one must disregard science. Science which we can observe is put down for faith and people consider this a good thing.<div>
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You know there's a problem when there's an organized and well-funded movement saying that science is a conspiracy. It's by the devil or just scientists. One way or the other science makes up these strange lies for the express purpose of REBELLING AGAINST GOD! Can you believe it? The nerve to knowingly falsify data. What's more is that all of the scientists in the world have to be in this. Everyone knows that we look out into space and God is just standing there waving to us, but those damned scientists making up those pictures of stars and galaxies and shit.</div>
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You know there's a problem when an entire political movement is based on religion. The conservatives and more to the point, tea party-ers. The tea party is the most awful political movement since the popularly known Nazi regime. One of the major things which separates the tea party from the Nazis is that at least the Nazis had balls. The tea party is every bit as bigoted and hateful. Come to think of it the tea party is even more aggressive religiously. No, they don't have gas chambers (yet), but they're got network TV and they're not afraid to lie through their asses to publicly ostracize anyone who disagrees with them. </div>
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You know there's a problem when people will vote for a candidate based entirely on their religious beliefs. If I had a dollar (inflation, ya know?) for every time I've heard "...But at least he's a Christian." I'd be in the zone. That explains for a lot of the conservative candidates. Who would really vote for these people? But at least they're Christian. Honestly though, one must publicly claim to be Christian to be elected in the U.S.A. In <a href="http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/StateConstitutions.htm">seven states, the state constitution prevents atheists from holding public office.</a> This is a repugnant practice.</div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-37693538007106339352012-04-14T18:28:00.000-04:002012-06-18T19:23:34.640-04:00The not a stamp collectorThis whole video has many errors, but I'll only get into one of them for now, <a href="http://youtu.be/znZb40_kizI?t=2m45s">this one</a>. I'd suggest stopping at 3:37, it's the end of what I'm talking about.<br />
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So, theists will sometimes content that atheism is a religion. There's an argument which goes like so "Atheism is a religion in the same way as <b>not</b> collecting stamps is a hobby.". That's a fair enough point in my opinion, but <a class="yt-user-name author" dir="ltr" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/MrMinistryMan" rel="author" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #ebebeb; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1c62b9; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;">MrMinistryMan</a> disagrees. Point by point here;<br />
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"This is a terrible analogy that does not fit our situation in any way."<br />
It's not a terrible analogy. Bear with me for this, a theist believes in a god whereas an atheist does not believe in a god. He makes the assumption here that an atheist believes there is no god. The distinction is subtle, but present. Think of it like this: you've got no evidence that there's a piece of paper in front of me, thus you may withhold belief. You would be irrational though to believe that there certainly is no paper in front of me. Now substitute "God" for paper.'<br />
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"The person who is merely not collecting stamps has no stance on this matter of stamps."<br />
That is not necessarily true. I personally don't collect stamps and I find collecting stamps to be a dumb thing to do. I consider it a waste of time unless the stamp has monetary or historical value. But in that case it's not just stamp collecting. In a like fashion, I don't believe in God. I think belief in God is irrational. I think it's a waste of time. It is possible to not partake in something and yet have an opinion of it.<br />
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"The only way this analogy could really fit is if they started saying "STAMPS DON'T EXIST"."<br />
That's just plain ridiculous. We've got evidence of stamps, we've all seen stamps. Hell, most of us use stamps on a fairly regular basis. Stamps are easy to observe and we've got plenty of evidence for their existence. I then submit that you're off your rocker, with all due respect of course.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499675835823883961.post-76137707176408311622012-04-14T03:34:00.001-04:002012-04-14T03:34:29.479-04:00God's ultimate "Fuck you!"So Christians claim that people have free will. Any dispute? Anyway, God is allowed to intervene whenever he sees fit. We're supposed to praise him for that. But when he doesn't intervene? When he allows something evil or painful to happen, "Oh, God can't do that, it would interfere with free will.". But he can help Tebow win football games according to <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31751_162-57358717-10391697/poll-does-god-help-tebow-win-43-say-yes/">43% of people polled</a>. So free will can be used when it's convenient, and discarded when it's not.<br />
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God is also supposed to have a plan, he know all that's happened, will happen and is happening and he has a freaking plan. Now imagine you setup people as chess pieces and they weren't allowed to talk or look around, only move how they thought advantageous. Now imagine that you're playing the chess game. How would you be able to hold a plan with your pieces moving in such discord? The other issue here is, if God knows the future... How then is it possible for it to not be predestined? That's like me saying, in five minutes you're going to go outside and be hit by a car, but you've got free will and don't have to, but you will. How is that different from predestination?<br />
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So free will aside, in fact taking free will into account. God created us to be curious, and put a magic tree of death in the middle of the so-called perfect habitat for humans. That's equivalent to putting a mouse trap loaded with peanut butted in a pet mouse's tank and expecting them not to go for it. Then, to spike curiosity, God tells us not to eat from or even touch the tree. So what's running through any humans mind? "I wonder if...". So then a talking snake appears (Maybe they'd been sampling some of the herbs in the garden.) and tricks them into eating the fruit. God shows up pissed and curses the entire race which he loves so damn much. So now we all have to endure sin because God in his all-knowing love screwed us over.<br />
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I erred in the above paragraph. I said that God cursed an entire race, but he cursed an entire planet to death. God must really like those apples. God cursed the serpent by making it slither (as opposed to?) and "eat dust". God set the snake against people and vice-versa. God made childbearing painful and dangerous for no apparent reason but to be a dick. We have to work for food now, which considering the alternatives, really isn't that bad. But this is quite a malevolent move from a supposedly omnipotent benevolent being.<br />
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Then God has the nerve to say repeatedly that he's just. Do any of these actions seem just? Would a court pass this punishment? On to Leviticus, where almost everything is punishable by death, is that just? How about wiping entire cities off the map in various ways (not that we don't do that, but this is a loving god...)? <br />
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I then have to submit that the "God" of the Bible is probably the devil. I mean, think about it. God wipes out cities, dooms entire planets to death, wipes out cities, dictates the stoning of children for disrespect, the list goes on... Does that sound like a loving god? Does that sound like a devil?<br />
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"I realized today that I am God, I prayed and realized that I was talking to myself."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073358109723983248noreply@blogger.com0