Do you have an actual argument, or what? Creation could ultimately only come from a single source; it makes logical sense there is only one God. A true God is a being whom was not created by anyone else, for which whom no one is a God to Him. Humanity has worshipped many Gods, but it doesn't mean there isn't one God. Humanity has worshipped, the sun, the earth, clay, stone, wood, themselves, money, power, sex..there are a million different things that are a god to people. Still has no bearing on the argument there is only one God. And if there is, then you will answer to Him one day.

>> ^MaxWilder:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I think it's an apt comparison. There's spmething in her sneering commentary that reminds me of her. This isn't a girl who is disillusioned about the bible, this is someone who hates God. For all you idiots know she could be a satanist. There are quite a few satanists who put out this kind of commentary to smear God, knowing full well He exists..but just playing to the religious beliefs of secular humanists.
Hell is for sinners who won't turn from their sins. You don't seem to care where you're going so I don't why you are acting so outraged. You don't want to spend an eternity with God; He'd be giving you what you want..eternal seperation from Him. And when it does happen you won't be able to act surprised or claim no one tried to warn you either.

I also hate Zeus. And Shiva. And Woden. Oh, no wait, I don't hate them, because I don't believe in them. If, however, there were Woden worshippers who kept getting in my face about how I couldn't go to Valhalla unless I did as I was told, I might start getting a little pissed at them. Not their god. But how could I fail to believe in him? I mean, we named a day of the week after the guy!
How can you deny that Woden exists, Shiny! Do you skip directly from Tuesday to Thursday? You're just a Woden hater! Come back to Woden before it is too late! You can still have a seat in Valhalla! If you don't, then when you die you will be left out to shiver in the cold before the gates, never to be warm and welcomed! And you will have nobody to blame because you have been warned!
“Wôld, Wôld, Wôld”!
Heaven’s giant knows what happens,
Looking down from heaven,
Providing full jugs and sheaves.
Many a plant grows in the woods.
He is not born and grows not old.
“Wôld, Wôld, Wôld”!

>> ^shinyblurry:

I think it's an apt comparison. There's spmething in her sneering commentary that reminds me of her. This isn't a girl who is disillusioned about the bible, this is someone who hates God. For all you idiots know she could be a satanist. There are quite a few satanists who put out this kind of commentary to smear God, knowing full well He exists..but just playing to the religious beliefs of secular humanists.
Hell is for sinners who won't turn from their sins. You don't seem to care where you're going so I don't why you are acting so outraged. You don't want to spend an eternity with God; He'd be giving you what you want..eternal seperation from Him. And when it does happen you won't be able to act surprised or claim no one tried to warn you either.


I also hate Zeus. And Shiva. And Woden. Oh, no wait, I don't hate them, because I don't believe in them. If, however, there were Woden worshippers who kept getting in my face about how I couldn't go to Valhalla unless I did as I was told, I might start getting a little pissed at them. Not their god. But how could I fail to believe in him? I mean, we named a day of the week after the guy!

How can you deny that Woden exists, Shiny! Do you skip directly from Tuesday to Thursday? You're just a Woden hater! Come back to Woden before it is too late! You can still have a seat in Valhalla! If you don't, then when you die you will be left out to shiver in the cold before the gates, never to be warm and welcomed! And you will have nobody to blame because you have been warned!

“Wôld, Wôld, Wôld”!
Heaven’s giant knows what happens,
Looking down from heaven,
Providing full jugs and sheaves.
Many a plant grows in the woods.
He is not born and grows not old.
“Wôld, Wôld, Wôld”!

OMFG you are so thick.

Your idea of God is not the only idea of God in the world!

As I have thoroughly explained in previous posts, I am pretty damn sure that YOUR god doesn't exist, just the same way I am pretty damn sure that Zeus doesn't exist.

HOWEVER, I still consider it possible that some form of higher consciousness may exist in some way that has not been defined and abused by human beings.

So, "Do you believe in God?"

"Yes, I'm a (insert religion here)" - Theist
"I'm not religious, but maybe there's something out there. I don't know." - Atheist (commonly referred to as Agnostic, which is an incorrect use of the term as it was originally defined)
"That question cannot possibly be answered by a human being." - Agnostic (also Atheist)
"No, I am sure there is no God. When we die we simply vanish from existence." - "Strong" Atheist (rare)

Sorry if that's not simple enough for you to comprehend. I'm trying to be polite, but you are making it very hard. These concepts don't always fit into pretty little one-syllable boxes as you would like them to.

Furthermore, this debate is pointless. If I wanted to, I could call myself Agnostoatheistitarian or some bullshit like that. As long as you understand what I mean, usually after a little more conversation, you should stop arguing about what word I call myself and talk about the real issues, like faith vs. evidence.

>> ^smooman:

>> ^Ti_Moth:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I mean without faith what do you have?
>> ^smooman:
ps: shinyblurry, science has, quite conclusively, proven that the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old....but thats neither here nor there. You at least recognize that it doesnt matter (as do i), as it pertains ones personal relationship with god.
The bible wasnt written to tell me how old the earth is =)



Err... Evidence and critical thinking?

while that may be true, they are not mutually exclusive.
faith is the evidence of things unseen (i know thats gonna mean zilch to you so take that with a grain of salt) and i very seriously doubt you could convincingly question the critical thinking skills of persons such as CS Lewis
i dont think atheists (or non christians for that matter) are godless sinners, devoid of any morality, any more than i would hope that you not think me an ignorant, bumbling, neanderthal because im religious
we have different religious views, however this does not make either of us smarter, more critical, or better than the other because of that fact


My apologies if you thought I was refering to you, my flippant comment was directed at shinyblury and his young earth antics. And I understand faith in principle it just seems that people have faith in whatever is the nearest religion at the time of their spiritual awakening, I mean if you were living a few thousand years ago you may well have had faith in Thor or Zeus and thats all well and good but what if Mighty Ra and his family of gods are the correct thing to have faith in? You would be missing out on Vallhalla...

I also met Zeus. He is real. TOTALLY verifiable! What, you think I'm kidding?

Apollo was a Greek god for which the Romans had no equivalent (unlike Zeus/Jupiter, Poseidon/Neptune, etc.) so the Romans adopted him under that name. Some later Roman poets referred to Apollo as Phoebus but it wasn't as common.
>> ^grinter:

Didn't both the Greeks and Romans use the name Apollo?
Someone set me straight here.

I just pointed out he was being diplomatic...I never said I had to be. Nor am I being passive aggressive. I forwardly attacked your beliefs. I guess I'm banging rocks together because I don't believe in magic or things there is not evidence for. I'm not saying I'll never believe, I just haven't experienced anything yet that made me a believer. The same way you don't believe in zeus or woden because that shit doesn't make sense to you. Extend that one more degree of bullshit, and that's where I stand.>> ^shinyblurry:

He actually opens up very diplomatically. He says that it "could be that..." and explains how science doesn't "care" what it ends up finding about the mind. Then he continues to say that there's a lot of evidence that makes it hard to believe that the soul and the mind are a related faculty, and moreover unless further evidence comes forth, the idea of a soul is unfounded.
That's as diplomatic as you can get, yet you choose to be offended. Why? Is it because you've put all of your eggs in a brittle, rigid basket? Is it simply because what science has innocently found, right or wrong, good or bad, goes against what a group of ignorant pre-enlightenment era man conjured-up in his fact-deficient brain and wrote down as the word of god? What a silly, silly way of thinking existing.


Yes, it's extremely diplomatic to disguise the knife you're concealing behind an olive branch. Much like your reply here. You start out slightly magnanamously, explaining your viewpoint, and then you carry on to trash God and my beliefs, finishing with a little vitriolic cherry on top. I really think passive aggressive people are the worst kind of people besides atheists. Put them together and you've got a front seat to the 7th circle of hell. To me, you might as well be banging rocks together if you don't know you have a soul, or there is a God. People like this are mostly automated because they don't really know how anything works, or that God controls everything. You might as well be asleep for all the awareness you have. So believe what you will about religion, because I'm not religious. I follow Christ, and He hated religion. Trash my beliefs if you willl..to me, you're the one living a backwards ignorant life; You're 2000 years behind the times.

>> ^honkeytonk73:

>> ^residue:
suddenly: anti-theism
I don't see any previous comments that would have prompted your inane "response"
>> ^honkeytonk73:
We obviously must thank Jesus/God that it didn't impale the driver. Because Jesus/God certainly has a magical hand in the prevention, not instigation of accidents.


If I had said this, would you have also been as agitated and bothered to post a response? Probably not.
"We obviously must thank Zeus that it didn't impale the driver. Because Zeus certainly has a magical hand in the prevention, not instigation of accidents."


woaaha, man, you got him good! you totally sniffed him out as a religious wacko!!! hahaahah...but seriously man we don't need to bring zeus into this. not cool.

>> ^residue:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/honkeytonk73" title="member since August 22nd, 2007" class="profilelink">honkeytonk73 actually I probably would have.. I was just curious who you were responding to with that out-of-nowhere comment.. The Zeus reference actually is a nice way to illustrate my point since that also would have been both inane and phrased as a response
It just struck me as odd because it's a perfect response to someone saying "Thank God it didn't hurt anyone" but no one ever said anything to that effect.


So posts can only be made when prompted, and under no other circumstance? Very well. I will comply.

Feel better?

@honkeytonk73 actually I probably would have.. I was just curious who you were responding to with that out-of-nowhere comment.. The Zeus reference actually is a nice way to illustrate my point since that also would have been both inane and phrased as a response

It just struck me as odd because it's a perfect response to someone saying "Thank God it didn't hurt anyone" but no one ever said anything to that effect.

>> ^residue:

suddenly: anti-theism
I don't see any previous comments that would have prompted your inane "response"
>> ^honkeytonk73:
We obviously must thank Jesus/God that it didn't impale the driver. Because Jesus/God certainly has a magical hand in the prevention, not instigation of accidents.



If I had said this, would you have also been as agitated and bothered to post a response? Probably not.

"We obviously must thank Zeus that it didn't impale the driver. Because Zeus certainly has a magical hand in the prevention, not instigation of accidents."

@chtierna

I think maybe you confused my points a little bit. I wasn't saying atrocities don't happen anymore. I was saying that people use religion to justify atrocities but that doesn't automatically mean religion is the cause of the atrocity. So to take your AIDS example, I don't think AIDS is spreading rampantly in Africa due to the Catholic Church's disapproval of condoms. I think the price and availability of condoms along with cultural attitudes and a lack of education have a lot more to do with it. As evidence of this, you don't see the epidemic of AIDS in other Catholic countries that do have cheap and readily available condoms as well as education about the risks of unprotected sex.

And the Church's attitude towards condoms is not "Hey we hope everybody gets AIDS." They've repeatedly stated their stance that sex should be for procreation only. Some of their faithful (a good deal I would wager ) choose to engage in sex for pleasure rather than procreation. The Church feels that condoms promote sex for reasons other than procreation and therefore are against condoms on those grounds. The Pope recently clarified that if people are going to choose to engage in "sin" (as defined by the Catholic church i.e. recreational sex) then using a condom may be considered the lesser of two evils if there is a risk of the transmission of disease. But they haven't altered their fundamental viewpoint that sex should be for procreation only between two (heterosexual) married adults.

So I hope that clarifies a bit what I was talking about with atrocities. To sum it up, someone doing something in the name of religion doesn't resolve them of their personal responsibility for their actions. In many cases those actions are motivated by reasons other than religious reasons (in other words, people are just using religion as the excuse). In other cases, their narrow interpretation of the religions teachings are what I would call "extreme" (suicide bombers for instance).

This brings us to your other point, which is what to do about people who have extreme views? I wasn't offended by this video because of the religion it was attacking. I was offended by this video because it is tacitly approving disrespecting people because of their beliefs. It approves of belittling people and treating them with condescension for their beliefs. I still hold that even people with extreme views need to be treated with respect--they are no less human beings despite their misguided views. We need to separate the views from the person. We can and should point out the problems with extreme or misguided beliefs. We need to be patient but persistent. And we need to keep an open mind. It's far to easy to take the attitude "I'm right and my opponent is wrong" and miss out on areas where you both agree.

So yes, I still would have downvoted if the video called followers of Zeus idiots. That isn't going to accomplish anything but to add more intolerance and hatred to a world that is already seething with both. You said:

Realizing someone is making claims based on flawed arguments we owe it to voice our opinions and concerns

I absolutely agree with that, but I disagree with your sentiment that we should call them idiots. If the followers of Zeus are advocating human sacrifices then by all means we need to criticize the idea. We can do that, though, without being intentionally disrespectful to the people involved. However, as @mgittle pointed out, some people may feel disrespected anyway because their beliefs are tied so closely to their identity.

@SDGundamX

I'm still curious if you would have been offended if the video called believers in Zeus and Poseidon idiots. Is it belief in itself (any belief lacking empirical evidence against it) that you think should be shielded from intolerance or is it beliefs shared by many people? If I called someone who believed in Zeus a complete nutter, would that offend you? If it made them happy and comfortable with their lives.

I'm slightly confused by the multiverse angle, I'm not sure how the Flying Spaghetti Monster would have a bigger likelihood of existing in another universe (as a magical being always existing without evolving into place), I guess it's possible to speculate in a universe that functions in a way that gives rise to Him, but how does that contradict the observations made on how this universe functions?

About the atrocities, I think that we still have atrocities going on today. Just take the deaths of millions of Africans from AIDS because they were taught not to use condoms. You probably think this is an atrocity, but it's bought with money pumped into the catholic church from millions of believers, most of them I would assume moderates, that lend their indirect support to the continuation of these teachings (although lately Ive heard the Pope has changed his mind, a bit too late for all those who are dead). And yes, the Church might be separate from the belief, but its built up on a base of belief and given power and cover by believers. And in 20 years we will hear the same story again "that was then, this is now, I agree that was an atrocity but now we're rid of all that, I don't believe in that, nobody I knows believes in that anymore". And then on to the next decision that affects other people negatively. And as such religion is always safe, the atrocities are always in the past and criticism can be deflected or ignored.

Look, I feel as I'm rambling but my basic point is this: Either you have good reasons for believing in something, or you don't. What makes someone happy might _seem_ right for him or her, but as a species we owe our continued survival and common well-being to realize our limits and overcome them. One such limit is that as pattern-seekers we encounter false positives all the time (this surely benefited us very early in our development). In ancient times a flood must mean the God's are angry. A bad harvest must mean the field is cursed. A modern version would be feeling religion gives our life meaning and happiness and must therefor contain some deeper truth. I simply cannot see how this follows.

Realizing someone is making claims based on flawed arguments we owe it to voice our opinions and concerns, even if harshly as in calling someone an idiot.

>> ^SDGundamX:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/chtierna" title="member since September 25th, 2008" class="profilelink">chtierna
With regards to Elvis (or 9/11 conspiracy, "birthers," the Apollo mission conspiracy theories, and so one) I think there actually is more than enough evidence--empirical evidence--to disprove the claims.
With regards to any deity, I've already said I'm an atheist (i.e. I don't believe in them). But that does not mean they do not exist (actually, if you subscribe to the multiverse model of the universe then you could even go so far as to say it is likely the Flying Spaghetti Monster does exist somewhere, though not necessarily in our universe. ). It simply means that they don't meet my own personal burden of proof to warrant belief.
In regards to your next point, I think we need to separate religious belief from actions taken in the name of religion. Many faithful and non-faithful alike would label those acts you listed above as atrocities. Just because someone happens to be religious in no way means they are going to start condoning those acts you listed. And the reasons those things happen extends far beyond religion--we can't examine those acts without also examining the historical and socio-cultural contexts in which they occur. To merely look at, for instance, suicide bombers from a religious perspective seems rather simplistic to me given the historical, cultural, and political events that have led up to the idea terrorist acts are a valid tool for applying political pressure.
I've said this before (in other threads) but to me religion is a tool. Any tool can be turned into an improvised weapon. And that is what I believe has happened in those cases you described. It's clear religion can be used for great good or great evil. I think it is also clear the major monotheistic religions are going to have to change going into the future. They are going to have to be re-conceptualized to maximize the potential good and minimize or (if possible) downright eliminate the potential bad effects. Here is one book that has already called for such a re-conceptualization for Christianity (haven't read the book, by the way though the premise sounds interesting... check out the reviews).

@SDGundamX

Are you agnostic in respect to Elvis being alive? Are you agnostic in respect to the flying spaghetti monster or the pink invisible unicorn? If this had been a video calling people that believe Elvis is alive and well idiots would the wording have offended you so? What if he called people who believe in Poseidon and Zeus idiots. Would that offend you? If not, why not?

I used to be agnostic like you. I thought since I couldn't prove something didn't exist, I couldn't really argue against that thing. But in reality we do this all the time. Most people (I'd say everyone) have a set of filters setup against believing in anything and everything. Are you really agnostic about everything that you cannot prove/disprove? I'd think not (I may be wrong), and it wouldn't be very useful.

I am all for people being happy, but not at the expense of others. Gays being persecuted, Africans killing children because they believe they are posessed, Africans not using condoms and dying of AIDS because condom usage is a sin, people blowing themselves up for virgins in the afterlife, evolution being denounced and attacked from all sides. What is this madness and why can't we call it madness?

r10k, I studied the Bible with a respected religious man; one of the few Americans allowed to view and help decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls. We used an annotated version of the Bible that explained the puns, double meanings and other linguistic aspects that would be lost on someone who just picked up a King James at Barnes & Noble. My Prof. provided context, historical and cultural. He showed us more ancient Mesopotamian mythology that contained stories remarkably similar to those in the Bible. He, a religious man (Jewish), presented the book for what it was, with no apologies or attempts to shield us from the books' many contradictions and logical inconsistencies. Warts and all.

I seem to meet all your criteria for being able to have an opinion on the Bible. I've got context, depth and the instruction of a very wise religious scholar. No offense, but I probably understand this book better than you ever will, and yet....

My critical mind tells me this is mythology, like Zeus, or Beowulf, or Gilgamesh, or Frodo, Bilbo and Dumbledore. These are campfire stories from pre-scientific times that attempt to explain the -then many- mysteries of existence. Those days are gone, and we now know that we are not at the center of the universe, that space isn't made of water, that stars are not lights, that the world is not flat, that humans are part of an evolutionary chain and that the earth is billions of years old. Perhaps it's time to embrace the future, r10k, and leave the cave drawings behind you.

Just one person's opinion.... I could be wrong.