Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I'm really happy to have Sapience Film as a sponsor. This looks like a great project and I've already pledged $25 on Kickstarter to make this happen. Join me!

Shit... the fungus has already infected too much of his brain. I don't think we can save him. Not what he was, anyway. We can cannibalize his brain though. It won't hurt him much. Just a little pinch....

>> ^dag:

I'm really happy to have Sapience Film as a sponsor. This looks like a great project and I've already pledged $25 on Kickstarter to make this happen. Join me!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

We are the Mycon. We are part of Juffo-Wup.>> ^jonny:

Shit... the fungus has already infected too much of his brain. I don't think we can save him. Not what he was, anyway. We can cannibalize his brain though. It won't hurt him much. Just a little pinch....
>> ^dag:
I'm really happy to have Sapience Film as a sponsor. This looks like a great project and I've already pledged $25 on Kickstarter to make this happen. Join me!

We do not interpret the will of Juffo-Wup.

If only we could invent some sort of machine to give us more foresight.

I'd say the real disease isn't ignorance, its apathy. I mean, everybody knows we are fucked right but the way people go about their everyday life almost convinces you that they don't feel the same way. Willful ignorance perhaps?

>> ^Jinx:

If only we could invent some sort of machine to give us more foresight.
I'd say the real disease isn't ignorance, its apathy. I mean, everybody knows we are fucked right but the way people go about their everyday life almost convinces you that they don't feel the same way. Willful ignorance perhaps?


It's everything.

It's a lack of involvement in the world people find themselves in. It's a lack of curiosity about it and themselves. It's a lack of critical thinking or the desire to come to your own conclusions. It's a lack of will to engage in autodidacticism and take control of your own mind and future. It's a refusal to take responsibility for yourself, for your community, for your species, for the part you're playing in it all. It's the lack of will to care.

It's an almost nihilistic, deeply cowardly need to be an intellectual fucking pygmy, because otherwise it's just too damn hard, and people would have trouble getting to sleep at night.

It's also the belief that not enough people will see things the way you do so nothing will ever change.

This pervasive apathy is what we get when we make people less responsible for their choices by taking away their freedoms. They also tend to behave badly when they're not held responsible for their actions. The more people are free, the more they're driven to organize, mobilize and regulate each other on their own.

apathy and ignorance.
a pretty potent mix.
not really surprising when you create a society of consumers.
where people equate success with their bank account and relate who they are with what they own.
a whole population of "happiness machines" who have been told since they were tiny how "special" and "unique" they are and how the pursuit of material goods is not only desirable but praise worthy.

that somehow the individual is more important than their neighbor or community.
so is it any wonder that apathy and ignorance are the outcome?
whether you believe this is by design or just a convergence of random events...
the end result is the same.

apathetic,self absorbed cunts.

I blame late-night hour-long commercials that not only have their own mini-commercials, but other's commercials as well.

*commercial *documentary

Is this going to be like an anti-Idiocracy?

I think the decay and entropy we're seeing in the system is an inevitable byproduct of consciousness that cannot be legislated, philosophized, or medicated out of existence.

The reagent behind this self-annihilating enlistment in the demise of our species will always be our mortality. People will always be born with the inborn dictate to progress through the various stages of psychology that eventually ends up leading to a form of nihilism.

We can alter the system so that people spend less time during their most 'productive' years contributing to the decline but we won't have actually altered the experiment, just the timeline.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

You strike me as a glass half empty type. >> ^petpeeved:

I think the decay and entropy we're seeing in the system is an inevitable byproduct of consciousness that cannot be legislated, philosophized, or medicated out of existence.
The reagent behind this self-annihilating enlistment in the demise of our species will always be our mortality. People will always be born with the inborn dictate to progress through the various stages of psychology that eventually ends up leading to a form of nihilism.
We can alter the system so that people spend less time during their most 'productive' years contributing to the decline but we won't have actually altered the experiment, just the timeline.

Spoiler Alert!
.
.
.
.
.
The answer is "NO".

right. Its the same thing someone else has said for the last several thousand years. Every year since written language has been around someone has claimed it was all going collapse. I won't hold my breath on this one.

The disease is sin. The cure is Jesus Christ. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Nice. Here we go.>> ^shinyblurry:

The disease is sin. The cure is Jesus Christ. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

>> ^dag:

You strike me as a glass half empty type. >> ^petpeeved:
I think the decay and entropy we're seeing in the system is an inevitable byproduct of consciousness that cannot be legislated, philosophized, or medicated out of existence.
The reagent behind this self-annihilating enlistment in the demise of our species will always be our mortality. People will always be born with the inborn dictate to progress through the various stages of psychology that eventually ends up leading to a form of nihilism.
We can alter the system so that people spend less time during their most 'productive' years contributing to the decline but we won't have actually altered the experiment, just the timeline.



Hah! I agree with petpeeved. It's entropy, plain and simple, and it's completely natural.

I feel the apathy problem too sometimes. But it seems pretty selfish when you think about it. Most people's problem isn't that other people don't care, it's that other people don't care about what you think they should care about. Does that make sense?

Religion is the disease, Blurry. You're feverish rants, nonsense ramblings, and tone-deafness are primary symptoms. Reason is the only thing that can save you or this planet, but I fear it is too late for you and your fellow carriers. The infection has mutated into hundreds of different, self-preserving variations, and reason, although a powerful medicine (and requisite for wisdom), cannot cure those who refuse treatment in the first place, or have simply become immune to it's healing due to past, repeated undertreatment. Religion has evolved into a superbug.


Can the next version of VS please hide ignored comments that have been quoted in a subsequent comment?

>> ^skinnydaddy1:

right. Its the same thing someone else has said for the last several thousand years. Every year since written language has been around someone has claimed it was all going collapse. I won't hold my breath on this one.


But it's a GREAT way to make money.

>> ^deathcow:

We do not interpret the will of Juffo-Wup.


Dude.. i love starcon 2 so much. I wish i could play it now

Edit:
Wait, wtf is this UQM?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Been playing UQM for the last few weeks with my 11-year-old. He absolutely loves it. Just goes to show that a good game is timeless. And SC2 is probably in the top 3 games ever made, IMHO.>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^deathcow:
We do not interpret the will of Juffo-Wup.

Dude.. i love starcon 2 so much. I wish i could play it now
Edit:
Wait, wtf is this UQM?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

And bringing this thread derailment right around it's about a group of sentient beings pooling their energy for a better future and overcoming evil ignorance. >> ^dag:

Been playing UQM for the last few weeks with my 11-year-old. He absolutely loves it. Just goes to show that a good game is timeless. And SC2 is probably in the top 3 games ever made, IMHO.>> ^dannym3141:
>> ^deathcow:
We do not interpret the will of Juffo-Wup.

Dude.. i love starcon 2 so much. I wish i could play it now
Edit:
Wait, wtf is this UQM?

>> ^dag:

Been playing UQM for the last few weeks with my 11-year-old. He absolutely loves it. Just goes to show that a good game is timeless. And SC2 is probably in the top 3 games ever made, IMHO.>> ^dannym3141:
>> ^deathcow:
We do not interpret the will of Juffo-Wup.

Dude.. i love starcon 2 so much. I wish i could play it now
Edit:
Wait, wtf is this UQM?



I'm playing it now. It's funny you mention that dag, my dad bought this and i played it on his pc when i was something like 7, and i'd say it's the largest contributing factor to my adoration of space and why i'm getting my astrophysics degree now

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

That's awesome. I can only hope that my son gets the same kind of inspiration. Make your sure you get the voice pack and turn it on in the settings - it adds a lot to the aliens.>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^dag:
Been playing UQM for the last few weeks with my 11-year-old. He absolutely loves it. Just goes to show that a good game is timeless. And SC2 is probably in the top 3 games ever made, IMHO.>> ^dannym3141:
>> ^deathcow:
We do not interpret the will of Juffo-Wup.

Dude.. i love starcon 2 so much. I wish i could play it now
Edit:
Wait, wtf is this UQM?


I'm playing it now. It's funny you mention that dag, my dad bought this and i played it on his pc when i was something like 7, and i'd say it's the largest contributing factor to my adoration of space and why i'm getting my astrophysics degree now

If religion is the disease, then why did we have over 100 million deaths from atheistic regimes in the 20th century? They made it their express goal to exterminate religion and in the process committed some of the worst atrocities in history. No, the problem is clearly human nature. When man tries to get rid of God he just replaces God with himself. I agree with you, that religion itself has contributed to the suffering and degeneration of the planet. Jesus hated religion. That's why He drove the moneychangers out of the temple. That is why He railed against the pharisees. He said, these people worship God with their lips but their hearts are far from Him. Scripture says this about religion:

James 1:27

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

The problem has always been that people follow the traditions of men rather than demonstrate the love of God. Even just a few decades after the cross, Paul wrote about men who preached a different gospel, one that glorified men rather than God. The contamination is universally human nature. Nothing is pure in the hands of an impure heart.

Examine history and see the parallels. Humanity is just repeating the same story, over and over again. There is nothing going on today that hasn't already happened before. The set and props have changed, but our nature hasn't changed. Man corrupts everything he touches because his scheming is against the will of God. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end are the ways of death. The problem is outlined in this video. Yes we have more knowledge, but knowledge doesn't help us. What we need is wisdom. However, wisdom doesn't come from man, it comes from God. Wisdom isn't something you can engineer..explore some philosophy and you will see that ultimately it has no real answers.

The divine wisdom, however, ordained that Jesus Christ would come in the flesh to give us our answer. It says that message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. The world in its wisdom knows nothing of the ways of God, so God chose what the world would consider foolish to shame the wise. God chose to save us in a way people would consider foolish, because the foolishness of God is wiser than mans wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than mans strength. You think it's ridiculous, but God is simply showing up the wisdom of the world for what it is: foolishness.


>> ^Fletch:
Religion is the disease, Blurry. You're feverish rants, nonsense ramblings, and tone-deafness are primary symptoms. Reason is the only thing that can save you or this planet, but I fear it is too late for you and your fellow carriers. The infection has mutated into hundreds of different, self-preserving variations, and reason, although a powerful medicine (and requisite for wisdom), cannot cure those who refuse treatment in the first place, or have simply become immune to it's healing due to past, repeated undertreatment. Religion has evolved into a superbug.
Can the next version of VS please hide ignored comments that have been quoted in a subsequent comment?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

^Shiny makes a good point - Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot - the biggest baddies of the 20th, we're all atheists. Might it be that extremist ideologies of any kind are the problem?

Premise is flawed. Ignorance is not the problem. Ignorance is the absence of knowledge. Today, there is really no excuse for ignorance on a given topic. If you want to know about the environment, politics, economics; there is more than enough freely available knowledge.

The mistake made here is thinking that ignorance is the opposite of wisdom. That is incorrect. Stupidity is the opposite of wisdom, and wisdom only comes through experience.

Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge.

>> ^dag:

^Shiny makes a good point - Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot - the biggest baddies of the 20th, we're all atheists. Might it be that extremist ideologies of any kind are the problem?


Actually Hitler was Catholic. He was a warrior of Christ. In a speech from April 12, 1922 and published in his book My New Order, Adolf Hitler explains his perspective on Jesus Christ:

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.

In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.


I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.
- Adolf Hitler, to General Gerhard Engel, 1941

Just thought you should know.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I take your point. Why did I think Nazism was an atheistic movement? Too much Fox News maybe. I am ashame.>> ^LarsaruS:

>> ^dag:
^Shiny makes a good point - Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot - the biggest baddies of the 20th, we're all atheists. Might it be that extremist ideologies of any kind are the problem?

Actually Hitler was Catholic. He was a warrior of Christ. In a speech from April 12, 1922 and published in his book My New Order, Adolf Hitler explains his perspective on Jesus Christ:
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.

I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.
- Adolf Hitler, to General Gerhard Engel, 1941
Just thought you should know.

^ Not completely true, and I would argue that the cult of personality surrounding Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Mussolini, et al, is at the very root of religion. They may or may not have been atheists, but they were definitely using religion of a sort to gain and keep power. Dogma is dogma, and blind faith in dogma or a leader IS religion, whether that faith is whipped up through nationalist rhetoric or pious devotion to a deity. "Christian" is just a different flavor on the same banana split.

Hirohito was viewed as a living god. Hitler killed Jews because he felt it was god's will. This whole "atheism was responsible for the Holocaust" bullshit is just that... tired bullshit. It's the reactionary mantra and selective parsing of history by blissfully-ignorant religious zealots who can't compute, or, just refuse to accept the utter devastation religion has wreaked on the human species IN THE NAME OF GOD.

Lack of belief is not a belief, and connecting atheism to 20th century atrocities is several logical fallacies all rolled into one dumb assertion. Believing it and saying it over and over doesn't make it true, and just because some murderous bastard was an atheist doesn't mean some nutter's concept of atheism was the cause.

>> ^dag:

^Shiny makes a good point - Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot - the biggest baddies of the 20th, we're all atheists. Might it be that extremist ideologies of any kind are the problem?

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Then, in that same vein - could you make the case that religion is not necessarily the cause of atrocities either. Correlation is not causation. Or in other words - Nutty sociopaths may be religious - but it's not why they commit atrocities - just a side effect.

>> ^Fletch:

^ Not completely true, and I would argue that the cult of personality surrounding Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Mussolini, et al, is at the very root of religion. They may or may not have been atheists, but they were definitely using religion of a sort to gain and keep power. Dogma is dogma, and blind faith in dogma or a leader IS religion, whether that faith is whipped up through nationalist rhetoric or pious devotion to a deity. "Christian" is just a different flavor on the same banana split.
Hirohito was viewed as a living god. Hitler killed Jews because he felt it was god's will. This whole "atheism was responsible for the Holocaust" bullshit is just that... tired bullshit. It's the reactionary mantra and selective parsing of history by blissfully-ignorant religious zealots who can't compute, or, just refuse to accept the utter devastation religion has wreaked on the human species IN THE NAME OF GOD.
Lack of belief is not a belief, and connecting atheism to 20th century atrocities is several logical fallacies all rolled into one dumb assertion. Believing it and saying it over and over doesn't make it true, and just because some murderous bastard was an atheist doesn't mean some nutter's concept of atheism was the cause.
>> ^dag:
^Shiny makes a good point - Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot - the biggest baddies of the 20th, we're all atheists. Might it be that extremist ideologies of any kind are the problem?

^ Sure, you could, I guess, but you'd have to argue that religion was merely a front for the Inquisition, the Crusades, witch hunts, etc. Religion is not "necessarily" a cause, but I think it's more than reasonable to blame religion when these things were done explicitly in God's name or under the direction of the church. When "atheism" is blamed, you're implying atheism is some belief system with tenets that direct or justify said atrocity. It's not. I'm pretty sure Pol Pot didn't believe in leprechauns, but I've yet to hear anyone claim that he killed 3 million Cambodian citizens because of it.

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Good points.>> ^Fletch:

^ Sure, you could, I guess, but you'd have to argue that religion was merely a front for the Inquisition, the Crusades, witch hunts, etc. Religion is not "necessarily" a cause, but I think it's more than reasonable to blame religion when these things were done explicitly in God's name or under the direction of the church. When "atheism" is blamed, you're implying atheism is a some belief system with tenets that direct or justify said atrocity. It's not. I'm pretty sure Pol Pot didn't believe in leprechauns, but I've yet to hear anyone claim that he killed 3 million Cambodian citizens because of it.

I'm not really in on the whole 'religion is to blame' / 'no, atheism is to blame' thing. Hitler, Stalin, Pot - all psychopaths, for whom belief in god or otherwise was incidental to how they operated, in my opinion.

You could delete all religion from our collective memories today, and we'd only start inventing new ones tomorrow.

Wisdom, logic, and reason are great things. My own personal take on this short clip is that I'd be much more tempted to apply a one-word-label like "alarmist" to it rather than "wise", "logical", or "reasonable".

Every day the nightly news tells me about something that will almost certainly kill me or my loved ones... But I'm still here.

That's the vibe I'm getting from this, so I won't upvote for the time being. Just my take.

>> ^renatojj:

This pervasive apathy is what we get when we make people less responsible for their choices by taking away their freedoms. They also tend to behave badly when they're not held responsible for their actions. The more people are free, the more they're driven to organize, mobilize and regulate each other on their own.


To get back on the subject, I think renatojj has hit on something here. Western societies have gone through a major restructuring in the last century or a bit more. We've created systems to regulate social interactions and to ensure a better quality of life for all citizens, with relatively good results. To limit abuses of power, we've created bureaucratic states that function relatively independently of the people running them. Protocol is king now, at least ideally, and politics must function within its confines.

This is a remarkable feat, but there are side-effects: We discuss less and less the right or wrong of things - instead we ask "is it legal?" Also, in creating a process-based system of government, we've essentially decided it's best if people don't need to care too much about politics. Protocol will keep politicians in line and prevent any massive abuses. Furthermore, since western representative democracies strive to be, essentially, meritocracies, where we choose the best minds to lead us, the citizen is left to wonder: "If I don't understand the issues well enough to decide what to do about them, how can I judge the actions of those who do understand?"

There is little incentive for people to understand politics, as it has become withdrawn and abstracted. This is a sign of good times as well, of course - people mind their own business when they experience little interference in their lives. Now, of course, many feel threatened by economic turmoil and we are indeed seeing more activism. It will be interesting to see how things go from here.

If they get enough cash would they consider getting a real animator on board to replace the early 2000's flash crap in the trailer?

Please?

hey @rebuilder
you are a refreshing optimist my friend.
think you could box some of that up and share a bit with me because my cynicism has become a total beast and keeps hogging all the covers.
maybe a little sunshine will shut him up.

This video made me hopeful, but no one seemed to like the preview of it. Seriously, download it, an interesting watch if nothing else. http://videosift.com/video/The-Economics-of-Happiness

@dag @Fletch @LarsaruS

I think you're all forgetting that Hitler was a master of propaganda, and those statements affirming Christianity were just that. Hitler used a facade of piousness to cement his power with a predominantly Christian populace. Feel free to disagree, but then you have to deal with statements which he made to party loyalists, like these:

"National Socialism and religion cannot exist together....
"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity....
"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." (p 6 & 7)

Night of July 11-12th 1941

"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure." (p 43)

October 10th 1941

"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."

19th October, 1941, night

Doesn't seem like such a warrior for christ now, does he? The cult of personality that fletch is talking about just makes my point. When man tries to get rid of God, he just replaces God with himself. Human beings have the natural desire to worship, whether it is something like money, or power, or celebrity, or themselves, everyone who doesn't know the true God has at least one idol in their life they pay homage too.

To say there is no connection between atheism and communism is absurd. Atheism was at the roots of it, and that according to the communists themselves:

"Atheism is the natural and inseparable part of Communism"

"Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism"

Lenin

“With disdain I will throw my gauntlet full in the fact of the world and see the collapse of this pygmy giant. Then will I wander god-like and victorious through the ruins of the world. And giving my words an active force, I will feel equal to the Creator.”

Karl Marx

“The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion”

Karl Marx

So you see there is a connection between atheism and the atheistic regimes that committed uncounted atrocities. Fletch, you're even denial about the definition of atheism, which is the denial of any deity according to the dictionary. A famous quote says that "without God everything is permissable". And that is the logical connection, that a man unrestrained by any thought of ultimate accountability can justify any kind of moral action to himself. Consider this quote from Joel Marks, the professor of philosophy at the University of New Haven

“This philosopher has been laboring under an unexamined assumption, namely that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I now believe there isn’t…The long and short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality…I experienced my shocking epiphany that religious fundamentalists are correct; without God there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a God. Hence, I believe, there is no morality.

Even though words like “sinful” and “evil” come naturally to the tongue as say a description of child molesting. They do not describe any actual properties of anything. There are no literal sins in the world because there is no literal God…nothing is literally right or wrong because there is no Morality"

Please note, I am not saying atheists cannot be moral; I am simply saying that an amoral viewpoint can be a causal factor in committing atrocities, just as much as any zealout. Psychopaths suppress what they know is right and wrong, and dictators ordain it.

It goes back to my original point. It is human nature that is the problem, the corruption of which I attribute to sin. A moral person will be moral in every circumstance, whereas an immoral person will be immoral in every circumstance. You cannot chop it up to specific beliefs of methodologies..they only diagnose the symptom and not the cause.

If you want to have a smarter, more intelligent society, the only things you can do is support:
- Education
- Communication
- Critical thinking
There is no such thing as 'wisdom'. It is the kind of completely subjective word that should trigger you Baloney Alarm.

If you will, the first rule of Wisdom club is you do not talk about wisdom.

@shinyblurry said: Fletch, you're even denial about the definition of atheism,which is the denial of any deity according to the dictionary.



Thats not how most atheists define atheism. Atheism is the LACK OF BELIEF in any theistic claim. There is a crucial difference. I dont "deny" any deity, that sentence doesnt even make sense to me as an atheist, any more than the sentence "The denial of any leprechaun".

You (@shinyblurry) believe in God

I dont.

Thats all there is to it.

"Not believing in god" wasnt really a conscious or deliberate decision on my part, its just "the way I am". But when I examine that position rationally and deliberately I find that it does also make more sense than believing there is a god. Can a beliver really, REALLY say the same, I wonder?

Believe it or not, I can personally relate to how you feel about it. I used to feel mostly the same way as someone who was previously agnostic to the idea of whether there is a supreme being or not, a Creator of the Universe. I also know why you feel you have come to a very sound conclusion about the idea, which is that you see no evidence of God or spirit. If you believe matter is all there is, it makes the existence of a supernatural Creator rather far fetched doesn't it?

Now you talk about logic, but even if you don't believe in the supernatural, there is by default no logical reason why either scenerio is more likely than the other, if you go by the initial premise that everything is equally unlikely. Why should there be something rather than nothing? That is the great question on Stephan Hawkings mind, even though he believes he can get the entire Universe from quantum foam.

These were questions I wrestled with as an agnostic. For one, I knew the limitations of our subjective perceptions. The limitations of human knowledge. It's a big Universe out there and we haven't even left our solar system yet. There are many possibilities even within the traditional secular understanding. What if life emerged on another planet far, far earlier? What would an intelligence evolving over billions of years look like? Was there a power that ruled this entire Universe? Those were just wonderings. But I found the real struggle was to objectively define truth. Any foundational truth, really. What is beauty? What is altruism? What is truth itself? 7 billion subjective perspectives does not equal one objective one. There is no way to get outside the Universe and look into it, and there is no way to go back to before it was created. These are simply the differences between relative and absolute truth.

These questions are much bigger than atheism, which is why I was agnostic. I didn't see any way I could write God off and be objective, but at the time I didn't see much reason to believe in Him either. You apparently feel differently. I'm interested to hear your logical reasons for not believing in God. A revelation that I had when I was thinking about these things was that I had entangled the concept of God with all of the religions of the world. To truly be objective, you have to look past religion, and consider the problem on just a probability basis. What is the likelyhood of any of it? You can explain it away with this and this and this happened, there was this explosion and then rocks came together and then amoebas appeared and then apes and then me, tada. You have to put all of that aside, as well as the size of the Universe, and just consider Stephan Hawkins question. Why is there something rather than nothing?

In any case, you don't see any evidence for a spirit so you are dealing with an entirely different set of parameters. For there to be a spirit you would have to deal with the fact that everything you know is in some way, wrong. You just naturally are not going to look in that direction.

The thing about God is, He isn't going to push Himself into your life. You think it's just a matter of evidence, a matter of discovering something; the truth is that to know God is not a right, it is a priviledge. You could spend 10,000 lifetimes dedicated to searching for God and you would never find Him until that moment when He chose to reveal Himself to you.

Hebrews 11:6

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Sometimes He has mercy on atheists, like this man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4lgvZ5MCZ4

But biblically, He tells us to seek Him out. If you refuse to do that then you don't have any excuses. You've heard the truth and we are accountable to what we know. You don't feel a need for God right now but that's why we're here. God is patient, but we aren't guaranteed a single day on this planet. If you died today you would face judgement, but His mercy keeps you here that you will repent and turn from sin. So don't take your life for granted because that isn't anything we control. I say this out of love. God gives a lot of grace, and to know Jesus Christ is to know peace, and joy. It is to understand the meaning of truth, to have love, and to be free. It is to be made new. My prayer is that you, and others here, will come to know that for yourselves.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
@shinyblurry said: Fletch, you're even denial about the definition of atheism,which is the denial of any deity according to the dictionary.
Thats not how most atheists define atheism. Atheism is the LACK OF BELIEF in any theistic claim. There is a crucial difference. I dont "deny" any deity, that sentence doesnt even make sense to me as an atheist, any more than the sentence "The denial of any leprechaun".
You (@shinyblurry) believe in God
I dont.
Thats all there is to it.
"Not believing in god" wasnt really a conscious or deliberate decision on my part, its just "the way I am". But when i examine that position rationally and deliberately I find that it does also make more sense than believing there is a god. Can a beliver really, REALLY say the same, I wonder?

There really is nothing quite like a series of long winded, inane comments about the human condition and the verses in the Bible that support it to kill a discussion.

@shinyblurryBut I found the real struggle was to objectively define truth. Any foundational truth, really. What is beauty? What is altruism? What is truth itself? 7 billion subjective perspectives does not equal one objective one.

Well, as you say, our understanding is limited, and we may neveer truly figure it out, but from my pespective, if anything could ever be seen as objectively true, that would have to be science. Compare science to religion, there are thousands of religions, all claiming to see some deeper truth in the universe, but there is just one science. There is no such thing as "Japanese science" or "American Science" or "Middle eastern science" The first law of thermodynamics isnt different in Germany og Guatamala, and if we ever make contact with an alien race on the other side of the universe capable of science, they will have discovered the same law. Theyll also discover that energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared and so forth. Compare that to religion: As soon as two tribes are separated by a mountain or a lake, their religious "truths" will start to diverge.

Or, maybe we're wrong, maybe, despite being independently confirmed over and over in different parts of the world and even in the farthest stretches of the universe, the laws of physics and logically sound facts derived from science is all wrong, maybe there is some other, unknown objective truth waiting to be discovered. Still one thing seems glaringly obvious: Christianity seems to be as far from an objective truth as one can get. Even Christians can't agree on it. There are something like 30 thousand recognized branches of Christianity, and when taken at the level of an individual, the picture is even worse. Almost every christian seems to have a different idea about whats really true about Christianity.

So, if I had to hedge my bets on how we can find objective truths: Science.