Harry's Place

“I have no problem with religious people seeking to persuade me that there is a God, and that their God is the best one. I perfectly understand why they want to do so.”

So basically what you’re saying is that you have no problem with people believing idiotic things and wasting (and ruining) their lives – and other people’s lives – going on and on about idiotic things?

Well, I let you post here, Paul.

Does that answer your question?

You’re so 19th century (CE or AD, I’m easy about that), David, I must say in a rather entertaining and endearing way. (I am sorely tempted to quote Shatov from “The Devils” at you…but, well, I may yet do so)

Maybe they could illustrate the posters with the manifold great achievements (intellectual cultural and artistic) that atheist societies (as opposed to individual atheists within non-atheistic societies) have generated over the millenia?

The Routemaster was a God-fearing, worshipping bus: its bendy replacement is as atheistic as they come.

“Does that answer your question?”

Actually, no – it doesn’t.

Non religious people do have a moral obligation to relieve those who are not really suited to religion from these sources of unnecessary stress

where does this concept of morality come from? I’m not sure that every single nonreligious person in the world would agree with that. and I’m equally not at all sure how much a bus advertisement will actually help. won’t it add to the worry you identified?

While we’re at it, how about the achievements of societies in which no child-abuse goes on?

Does anybody notice anything wrong with the slogan?

a) “There’s *probably* no god”? This doesn’t sound very confident. Are these guys really atheist or what? Do they have some doubt that god may exist after all, and in that case wouldn’t he be really really angry?

b) “Stop worrying and start enjoying your life” – Stop worrying about what? About if what your doing is moral or not? If while you’re enjoying you life others suffer as a result?

Religion (at least in its benign form), other then promoting belief in god, also usually promotes moral behaviour that is more or less coherent with civil behaviour. Take it away, without replacing it with a proper secular moral philosophy and all you get is a bunch of nihilists.

Maybe they could illustrate the posters with the manifold great achievements (intellectual cultural and artistic) that atheist societies (as opposed to individual atheists within non-atheistic societies) have generated over the millenia?

Depends how you define it. Are you going to count the Buddhist world as theists? Confucian China? Revolutionary America?

You might even notice that societies in which there is a healthy debate between religion and atheism (eg 19th century England) often manage considerable intellectual and cultural achievements.

But this bus thing is a silly stunt. As pointless as the Church of England and much less entertaining.

I was just wondering if anyone believes in destiny?
http://www.GodYesOrN.com

“I was just wondering if anyone believes in destiny?
http://www.GodYesOrN.com”

It looks like God nudged your typing hand….

What makes them think that atheists enjoy life or live it to the full? If atheists wanted to spread their word and increase their numbers they could start by – re the previous debate – not killing 200,000 of their offspring a year.

I suppose I am a moderate athiest. Many religious folk I know are motivated to do good things in part because of their religion, that’s great.

Religious folk that can annoy me are the fire and brimstone types. Even then, I occasionally have a chinwag with them, like one time on a wet afternoon in Sheffield city centre when a chap tried to persuade me on the evils of drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex. He didn’t persuade me, although he did say he would pray for me, which was nice.

I think the bus campaign is a great idea, I will contribute.

I think David T is too soft on religion.

Personally I think superstition is just a silly critical thinking failure. In it’s religious guise, it can so often be considerably worse than merely silly. All too often it is notably malign in influence and directly informs folks making bad choices and behaving woefully towards others.

What makes them think that atheists enjoy life or live it to the full?

Well many atheists don’t do that, but with God out of the way, there may be a better chance to do so through humanism. Of course, they may simply start worrying about dietary supplements, natural childbirth or something else instead, but it’s a start.

Maybe they could illustrate the posters with the manifold great achievements (intellectual cultural and artistic) that atheist societies (as opposed to individual atheists within non-atheistic societies) have generated over the millenia?

You’re off on one of your benders again, I see. Based on this criteria, of course, the sucess of most great Jewish achievers through the centuries can be attributed to being surrounded by Christians.

And of course, as you know, there have never been any true atheist societies yet, so we can’t really tell.

And even if a theist society could on average produce greater achievements than an atheist one, so what? Under the Nazis, Germany made great technological and scientific achievements. Does that justify corporate fascism?

P.

But surely the point is to counter the numerous religious buses that ‘do the rounds’…..having no problem with people who seek to argue religions case should naturally lead to having no problem who want to put the opposite case…

Ed, do you honestly believe its only atheists who have abortions?

If so, you are deeply deeply stupid.

P.

“Non religious people do have a moral obligation to relieve those who are not really suited to religion from these sources of unnecessary stress.”

Don’t hide your light under a bushel, Brother.

I have always been suspicious of the Alpha Course. Now this. Simply making space for the discontented and controlling factions in society to strut their opinions. I think it interesting they choose these methods to reach people – the language of advertising and propaganda, the abrupt and usually slanted use of language, hectoring and conniving. Here we go again! And again! No sympathy and even less intelligence, a sort of flypast of the semi-educated.

Dawkins is such a prickHim and his ilk are more blindly dogmatic and hung up on religion than about 90% of believers.

i think for every 100 people who lose the faith maybe one will become humanists, much smaller than the number who become nihilists or just start believing any old crap. Humanism is the alcohol-free lager of faiths, which is why despite the fact that almost every intelligent person in the world can agree with 99 per cent of its tenets, it has never been more than a sideline. no one likes the fire and brimstone stuff of religion, no one likes being told to do, and no one like the rank hypocrisy of religious leaders through the ages and today, but no atheist moral system has the effective social pressure of Christianity, Judaism of Islam.

Simple saying “the golden rule” is not enough – for a free society to function we need more than the golden rule. The golden rule is the clarion call of selfish, 30-something man-children.

Dawkins is such a prickHim and his ilk are more blindly dogmatic and hung up on religion than about 90% of believers.

Good! The religious right has thousands of big mouths shouting about what they believe in and how evil and damned everyone else is – atheists have a handful, so more power to them

“Dawkins is such a prickHim and his ilk are more blindly dogmatic and hung up on religion than about 90% of believers.”

Yawn. Are there any other responses to Dawkins that people like you can trot out? Maybe something that isn’t patently false, silly and obviously cut and pasted from the BBC’s Have Your Say page?

“There’s Probably No God” – sounds like a qualification anyway. Surely this is veering dangerously close to mere agnosticism?

Herman “The religious right has thousands of big mouths shouting about what they believe in and how evil and damned everyone else is – atheists have a handful, so more power to them.”

I have no problem with atheism per se, just big-gobbed Dawkins groupies who feel the need to go around telling everyone who doesn’t agree with them that they’re idiots who are wasting their lives. To me they’re merely the flipside of the coin to the fire and brimstone religious types, and I don’t think they’re morally superior merely by virtue of being smaller in number!

To me they’re merely the flipside of the coin to the fire and brimstone religious types, and I don’t think they’re morally superior merely by virtue of being smaller in number!

I think they are morally superior because they are right

I reckon the ads are making a weak claim about the existance of gods because they could get in trouble with the ASA for making unproven claims if they used a more definate slogan.

Dawkins has been seen in the Oratory a couple of times.
After all – if someone went on about gays that much you’d start to wonder why they were so obsessed.

“doesn’t agree with them that they’re idiots who are wasting their lives.”

If you believe in idiotic things then the chances are quite strong that you’re a bit of an idiot. The answer: don’t believe in idiotic things.

This has nothing to do with dogmatic, myopic, close-minded attitudes (or whatever you want to call it), by the way. It comes from the sheer disbelief that here, in the 21st century, there are still people who, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, believe in patent nonsense – with absolutely no justification for it except what goes on in their own heads. It is, when you think about it, quite staggering – and not a little depressing. Aren’t we supposed to be a bit brighter than that? No?

God created Atheists to test the faith of Believers!

but no atheist moral system has the effective social pressure of Christianity, Judaism of Islam.

And thank God for that!

Oh and if we were still subject to Christian strictures and ’social pressure’ we would be stoning women who are not virgins on their wedding night as well as truculent kids, killing people of all sorts of completely arbitrary shiite, keeping slaves, blaming any ill fortune on the wrath of God….in short, we’d be really nasty savages…pretty much like the Taliban are now.

Maven: ‘God created Atheists to test the faith of Believers!’

- funny; but it’s also been said that God created dinosaur fossils for the same reason.

it’s also been said that God created dinosaur fossils for the same reason.

only by fringe nutters though

only by fringe nutters though

e.g. my mater and pater and their ilk.

Although I think the evidence for theism is far stronger than atheism and I’m more of deist myself (you don’t need to think that God wants to have a personal relationship with you)…I am all in favour of this initiative. Atheists should certainly be part of the religious-philosophical debate, as long as they don’t try to close down the debate (as they often do try to do).

Although I think the evidence for theism is far stronger than atheism

*guffaw*

Morgoth’s parents in “fringe nutters” shock.

“Oh and if we were still subject to Christian strictures and ’social pressure’ we would be stoning women who are not virgins on their wedding night as well as truculent kids, killing people of all sorts of completely arbitrary shiite, keeping slaves, blaming any ill fortune on the wrath of God….in short, we’d be really nasty savages…pretty much like the Taliban are now.”

No I was more thinking of low-key stuff like pressuring the rich to give away more of their money. Or pressuring on men to take responsibility for their children. or all the other pressures that have to be applied to people for a society to hold together.

As for stoning women – never been done by Christians. Slavery – abolished by Christians (admittedly the Quakers the most active). Using the Taliban as an example of religious people is weak, almost as piss-weak as people who use the Nazis to win an argument.

My mother was an athiest. My father believes in God. My sister does too. I don’t.

I think religiousness might be genetically transmitted; but not via the Y chromosome.

Fringe nutters in Norn Iron, Morgoth? Perish the thought.

(As I say, that’s one part of the world where, entering a town, especially on a rainy sunday, seeing big signs announcing that The End is Nigh, can appear positively welcoming and optimistic. Certainly in comparison with the alternative options of entertainment)

DAVID T
YOU ARE SO FUCKING 19th CENTURY!

NO TO YOUR DETERMINISM!
YES TO FREE WILL!

Fwiw I think they should start running an atheist ‘alpha course’ tho’ I doubt atheists are as going to be willing to open their wallets in the cause of knocking religion as members of the evangelical religions are about opening theirs to win converts.

“YOU ARE SO FUCKING 19th CENTURY!”

That’s a compliment. The 19th century for this country was a time of great intellectual and literary and technological achievement.

The fact that this campaign will be backed up by including some urls of atheist sites, rather than an “atheist alpha course”, shows the shallowness of the debate. Its about the moral superiority of the Dawkinsites. I’m not particularly hot on the “belief” aspect of religion but I think this campaign is atheism dumbed down beyond the point of any use.

Still if it’ll wind up some god botherers then I guess its worth a punt.

Ed wrote:

No I was more thinking of low-key stuff like pressuring the rich to give away more of their money. Or pressuring on men to take responsibility for their children.

Oh, so you were cherry picking. Which is what Christians have to do to claim that what we would consider moral behavior is borne of belief in the Christian god Yahweh and Christian teaching as laid down in the Bible.

The rub lies in what it is one uses, to do the cherry picking!

all the other pressures that have to be applied to people for a society to hold together.

Well have a squiz at human development index of various countries and plot this against religiosity; less than a tenuous link there I posit.

Paul, you’re a very angry man. I shall pray for you.

That’s a compliment. The 19th century for this country was a time of great intellectual and literary and technological achievement.

You’re so Whig…*

* As I believe the song by Sheena Easton used to go…

What people believe about things we don’t know and probably never will know is not a big problem, e.g. is there some creator of the universe we inhabit. The problem with religions is their nonsense that ancient scribbles is messages from a supernatural being and that they want to impose their interpretations of those ancient scribbles on how we organize our societies.

This atheist bus campaign is not addressing the right problem.

We cant disproof or proof if there is any supernatural creator, but we has fairly well disproof that the ancient scribbles aren’t any messages from supernatural being. Here the atheist campaigners should have a solid case for a campaign.

Paul, you’re a very angry man. I shall pray for you.

Now that fucking pisses me off. The arrogance implied in that statement is so colossal I want to punch you to the ground and stand over your bloodied near-corpse shouting “Pray for yourself, motherfucker, you’re going to need it!”

Shame I’m not Samuel L Jackon though, who could make it sound so cool.

But yes, the arrogance of theist fuckers is something I have absolutely no time and patience for at all.

“Well have a squiz at human development index of various countries and plot this against religiosity; less than a tenuous link there I posit.”

Yes, all the ones at the top are Christian countries. Most of those at the bottom are Muslim.

Mike S: “Paul, you’re a very angry man. I shall pray for you.”

Over the years I’ve met and known a number of people of various religious persuasions who have generously volunteered to pray for me. As I don’t believe in God, and wouldn’t have a clue which religion to follow if I did, this seems like an agreeable alternative to theism.

God probably doesn’t exist, so, my advice to everyone is, if the opportunity arises, take advantage of the possibility that intercessionary prayer might just work. If it does, your salvation is ensured; if not, you’ll feel happy knowing that nice people cared enough about you to pray for your soul.

You can call this Tim’s Wager, if you like.

The 19th century for this country was a time of great intellectual and literary and technological acheivement

Scientific and technological achievement – I will grant you that. But science should be a tool, not a master. (Do we need to go on about eugenics, euthansia and so on to make that clear…
I lam interested to observe t that the post below this one, about “abortion rights” (sic!) is praising an out-and-out supporter – and indeed fellow traveller – of Hitler in important regards, Marie Stopes…Ok but it’s Ok as she is “progressive”)

In as much as it took until the first half of the 20nd century for the malevolent influences of the likes of Nietzsche, Marx or Freud to seep in and take their poisonous course, I will grant you that.

Although one might also regard as it as time in which the visual arts, by becoming detached from the religious impulse, became increasingly decadent, self-absorbed, meaningless and, ultimately , dull and purposeless.

D’you think that if Manet could have looked into the future, and seen as his great-great-great-whatever progeny Tracey Emin, he would have carried on doing what he was doing?

Fuck! The moronic facile anti-intellectual imbecility of the Alpha Course is also a product of the idiotism that flourished in the 19th century (obviously it predates that a bit, but you get my point I hope)

(I’m angrier than morgoth, I think, btw)

Tim – you’ll end up as a Jansenist placing wagers like that.

As in David ‘Kid’ Jansen?

and indeed fellow traveller – of Hitler in important regards, Marie Stopes…

That’s utter hyperbolic bullshit.

“You can call this Tim’s Wager, if you like.”

No thanks. Is it okay if I call it something else?

Morgoth, no, it’s nothing of the sort

“Dear Herr Hitler, Love is the greatest thing in the world: so will you accept from me these (poems) that you may allow the young people of your nation to have them?”

Marie Stopes, August 1939.

(OK that is a frivolous, illustrative example…but do you really NOT think that her program of abortion, contraception and euthanasia were part of the same mindset of “racial purity”?)

Even The Daily Mail (!) called her “a Nazi-loving bigot”

‘She campaigned to have the poor, the sick and people of mixed race sterilised.

Sounds like a wholly Nazi policy to me

Ed:

Yes, all the ones at the top are Christian countries. Most of those at the bottom are Muslim.

I like this claiming for Chirstianity….reminds me of a sign outside of a little town I often visit in the lowveldt – ‘Hoedspruit for Jesus’….the god-bothering arrogance of it irritates the crap out of me!

I guess Japan, Hong Kong, Israel and Singapore can be claimed for Chistianity too? We can also ignore that those nominally Christian countries which are least religious tending towards the top of the HDI and at the bottom of teenage pregnancy rates also counts as Christianity leading to Or pressuring on men to take responsibility for their children. or all the other pressures that have to be applied to people for a society to hold together.

Jesus …..what is it about religiosity and critical thinking?

I was staying at my ultra, ultra-orthodox cousin’s in Jerusalem this weekend. Unlike British law, ignorance of the laws of ‘halachah’ is an excuse, and punishment for their breach is worse if you know what they are. This is more good news for atheists.

Ven, did you get around to praying for Joerg Haider? If so, could you please pray for me? I can be a bit of a dick at times, but I’m no Nazi.

Tim – I’m sure your soul is in less need of salvation that that of that late unlamented scumbag. I could light a candle for you sometime.

(Do I do the spiel that Catholic funerals are not intended to be, predominately or in purpose, a celebration of the life of the person being buried?)

Morgoth

“The arrogance implied in that statement is so colossal I want to punch you to the ground and stand over your bloodied near-corpse shouting “Pray for yourself, motherfucker, you’re going to need it!”

While I weakly whimper, “But it was a joke…”

Nick. I dont seriously believe there is a link between success and Christianity, but nor can you see one between backwardness and that religion. The richest countries have the lowest belief level but the wealth came first. Atheism didnt seriously become the majority faith in Europe until the 1960s and 70s, a long time after all the hard work was done. People used to point out that all the most successful countries were Protestant – later generations (and not just the Nazis) put that success down to racial superiority. There are lots of reasons why some civilisations succeed and lead to democracy, wealth, space exploration etc and some don’t. But Christianity is at least a malleable religion, and opens itself to philosophy and free-thinking (partly because it has attached lots of Hellenic culture to itself). I don’t believe a truly atheist society can last for very long, so by all means feel superior to Christians, you have every reason to despise people who believe in “idiotic” ideas, but don’t think that by knocking out Christianity you’ll replace it with liberal humanism, because people will just end up believing any old shit.

Took ages for that poisonous thought of Tom Paine to seep away….

I’ll support the bus – its a laugh.

“God created Atheists to test the faith of Believers!”

Madness created Believers to test the patience of Atheists!

Christianity grew in a world noted for its intellectual speculation. The pagan empire of Rome – with its great cities, its roads, the peace protected by its legions, made many things possible, including Christianity – a ‘Divine Providence’ the Church Fathers were pleased to acknowledge. The arts, philosophy, law, science and technology – all attained remarkable levels of development, thanks to the Pax Romana and its vibrant Hellenic culture.

But the same fertile environment also favoured the proliferation of ‘magic and mysteries’ – charlatanism, cults, sooth-saying and nonsense. The very richness of this cosmopolitan world, which enthusiastically assimilated so many diverse cultures, meant that even a movement known by the general rubric of ‘Christianity’ emerged.

With Constantine we got more than thousand years of papal tyranny closing the mind, it took a hard fight to take intellectual freedom back and we owe the Islamic caliphates a lot for their preserves of Hellenistic progress and so forth.

People used to point out that all the most successful countries were Protestant

Probably have more to do with Protestantism encouragement that people should be able to read the bible them self’s and not a faith thing, literacy is good for economic development.

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world — its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. …
“Why I Am Not a Christian” – Bertrand Russell

“With Constantine we got more than thousand years of papal tyranny closing the mind, it took a hard fight to take intellectual freedom back ”

Bullsheet. The Roman empire in the west ended a century after Constantinople. can hardly blame the papacy for the Saxons and Franks over-running the country. Christianity was able to conquer Rome because Rome had lost confidence in its own culture and its own religion. Rome had high levels of atheism and very low birth rates, while those crazy Christians had the exact reverse – sound familiar?

As for the “we owe the Islamic caliphates a lot for their preserves of Hellenistic progress and so forth” – can people who know nothing about Middle Eastern history stop trotting out this myth? The Arabs did not translate the Greek classics. No Arab could speak Greek in medieval times any more than they can speak it now. The Greek stuff was all translated by eastern Christians, Aramaic-speaking people in Mosul and Baghdad (ancestors of today’s unfortunate Iraqi Christians) who knew both Greek and Arabic.

“Tim – I’m sure your soul is in less need of salvation that that of that late unlamented scumbag. I could light a candle for you sometime.”

I don’t know. I expect Haider’s soul is already being lifted by the prayers of his many, many supporters, and by those who prioritise the souls of evil-doers rather than leave the matter in God’s hands. Nonetheless, the candle would be appreciated.

While I weakly whimper, “But it was a joke…”

Blessed are the jokers, for they shall be punched.

The Arabs did not translate the Greek classics.

What I mention was the Islamic caliphates who facilitated the intellectual inquiry of ancient knowledge not who actually did the translations. Those caliphates was cosmopolitan. Another feature that is often neglected is the advancements in agriculture in the caliphates during their golden age. The caliphates age of intellectual inquiry and nonreligious enlightenment was closed down by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) and religious fundamentalism.

Anyhow it was lucky there was something left to translate during the caliphates golden age, Constantine and subsequent Christian thugs did their best to burn the Hellenistic heritage.

This so cowardly and 1980s.

I dare them to replace the word ‘god’ with ‘Allah’.

Don’t the organisers want a little ‘bang’ for their buck?

Oh and if we were still subject to Christian strictures and ’social pressure’ we would be stoning women who are not virgins on their wedding night as well as truculent kids, killing people of all sorts of completely arbitrary shiite, keeping slaves, blaming any ill fortune on the wrath of God….in short, we’d be really nasty savages…pretty much like the Taliban are now.Nick In S.A.

Stop the equivalence. It blinds us to very real differences between faiths.

Charlemagne’s eldest daughter was a lovely blond Franke with long legs, double dees and a healthy appetite for Frankisch men.

When still single, she had two children from two different men before finally ( whew!) getting married to a third, a believing christian man, who loved her unconditionally.

Does that sound Taliban?

With Constantine we got more than thousand years of papal tyranny closing the mind, it took a hard fight to take intellectual freedom back and we owe the Islamic caliphates a lot for their preserves of Hellenistic progress and so forth.

Good lord!

With Constantine we got Byzantium, a Greek Christian empire, which preserved, copied and studied the Greeks right up until the 15th century.

With the approach of the barbarous Ottomans in the early 1400s many of those scholars fled to Italy thereby igniting the renaissance.

To Christians, the writings of those ancient Greeks are akin to a second Old Testament

(OK that is a frivolous, illustrative example…but do you really NOT think that her program of abortion, contraception and euthanasia were part of the same mindset of “racial purity”?)

What is wrong with giving women control over their own bodies, and of allowing the terminally ill similar control over their own bodies?

What the fuck is it with men wanting control over women? Get your rosaries off their ovaries!

Even The Daily Mail (!) called her “a Nazi-loving bigot”

The Daily Mail can go fuck itself when it comes to this particular subject.

Mike S, fair enough. If only I had seen the smilie in your post.

(OK that is a frivolous, illustrative example…but do you really NOT think that her program of abortion, contraception and euthanasia were part of the same mindset of “racial purity”?)

What is wrong with giving women control over their own bodies, and of allowing the terminally ill similar control over their own bodies?

What the fuck is it with men wanting control over women? Get your rosaries off their ovaries!

Even The Daily Mail (!) called her “a Nazi-loving bigot”

The Daily Mail can go fuck itself when it comes to this particular subject. And it can do similar with the disgusting Dacre-Broon love-in.

Mike S, fair enough. If only I had seen the smilie in your post. ;-)

Iasse

“Probably have more to do with Protestantism encouragement that people should be able to read the bible them self’s and not a faith thing, literacy is good for economic development.”
Classic!

Surely you believe in free speech JP??? Even for Atheists??? Since Allah = God whats the difference?

A bus with the statement “There are no non-naturalistic explanations to observable phenomena so lighten up and have a good time” would not be as catchy.

Those caliphates was cosmopolitan. Another feature that is often neglected is the advancements in agriculture in the caliphates during their golden age. The caliphates age of intellectual inquiry and nonreligious enlightenment was closed down by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) and religious fundamentalism

You’re so wrong I can only assume you’ve a PHD in history.

Agricultural improvements ( a mini industrial revolution, actually) took place in Northern Europe, COMPLETELY independant of Islam. It was a revolution that brought us the modern horse collar ( allows horse to pull more more without choking) and the wind/water mills which allow us to process far more grain far more easily.

Those two indigenous european inventions revolutionised agriculture and paved the way for a vast economic and intellectual revival.

We owe nothing to Islam, whereas islam owes us everything, including the ‘ City of Constantine’.

The Routemaster was a God-fearing, worshipping bus: its bendy replacement is as atheistic as they come

There you have the closed religious mind in all its glory:
Religious=good
Atheist=bad

Religion (at least in its benign form), other then promoting belief in god, also usually promotes moral behaviour that is more or less coherent with civil behaviour

I am sure you and Savonarola would agree immediately on what constitutes this benign form …

What makes them think that atheists enjoy life or live it to the full?

What makes you think they don’t? This one does.

Oh, c’mon that’s hardly fair (at least someone should have got the allusion between Ivan Karamazov “returning his ticket” – or indeed of any of Yerofeyev’s subsequent digressions upon that them – and the bendy buses being full of fare-dodgers)

The bendy buses work well on route 521, anyway. But putting them on the 25, 38 or 73 was foolishness incarnate.

Since Allah = God whats the difference?

Were it the case that both are the same, and seeings the numbers of Muslims in London these days, Hawkins should have no trouble acquiescing in my demand!

Anyhow it was lucky there was something left to translate during the caliphates golden age, Constantine and subsequent Christian thugs did their best to burn the Hellenistic heritage.

One question.

Was it Christians or Muslims who set the Great Library of Alexandia ablaze destroying many of the works of the Ancient World?

The Byzantines, a culture we’re loathe to give any credit to for current geo-political reasons, continued to produce ancient sculptures for the gardens of wealthy aristocrats. Only two of these ‘classical’ sculptures survive and they are believed to have been produced in Constantinople in the early 11th century.

They were of an execution and a beauty that’d make Michelangelo blush with shame.

Those that were still around in 1453 were all smashed by the turks.

What you don’t seem to understand is that much of Christianity’s intellectual and artistic brilliance has been lost because Islam now squats in what was once Christendom’s geographical CENTRE>/b>.

Now that fucking pisses me off. The arrogance implied in that statement is so colossal I want to punch you to the ground and stand over your bloodied near-corpse shouting “Pray for yourself, motherfucker, you’re going to need it!”

But yes, the arrogance of theist fuckers is something I have absolutely no time and patience for at all

Seconded.

But putting them on the 25, 38 or 73 was foolishness incarnate.

Yes. It was political posturing of the worst kind – Look at me, mummy, I am environmentally grown up! – by an idiot with an emotional age of 6.

“We owe nothing …”

You don’t get it do you, the advancements during the imperial caliphates was not the success of monotheistic magic and mysteries but the success of secular governance, as the advancements of western Europe was the success of secular governance not monotheistic magic and mysteries.

‘magic and mysteries’ – charlatanism, cults, sooth-saying and nonsense is always a sure recipe for dark ages.

Sometimes, I think atheists have a point.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTQzNWU3YjliYzQwNDQwYjE1Y2U0MzA5NjU1MTYyZWY=

The BBC, to their credit, did not reveal Stephen Green’s quote in all its glory. Check out his less-than-subtle graffiti hint/threat in full here:
http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press109.html

‘I should be surprised if a quasi-religious advertising campaign like this did not attract graffiti. People don’t like being preached at. Sometimes it does them good, but they still don’t like it. The advertising space on a bendy-bus is just the right height as well. But the graffiti artists, and indeed the atheist advertisers will have to be quick or the bendy-buses will be off the road in Boris’s purge, taking the anti-God message with them. Bendy-buses, like atheism, are a danger to the public at large. It occurs to me that the addition of just a few words from Psalm 14 would make the entire message Biblical: “The fool hath said in his heart …” ‘

This smells a lot like incitement to me. Is it worth reporting him?

Look, I know these authoritarian NuLab bullyboys (and bullygirls) have been in office for a long time, far far far too long infact, but I don’t think that even they have (yet) made “Incitement to commit graffiti” a crime

If atheists wanted to spread their word and increase their numbers they could start by – re the previous debate – not killing 200,000 of their offspring a year.

Oh, dear! Lord St Dawkins didn’t mention that an abortion was compulsory when I joined. I will attend to it immediately.

I dont know if you can say any medieval Islamic rulers were ’secular’. some were tolerant, far more tolerant than those in Christendom, and to their credit. Advancement doesnt come from secular governemnt but from open government, free societies. Secular and atheist doesnt neccessarily mean free and progressive. Lots of Dawkins’ friends in the secular movement want to close down all church involvement in education, medicine and adoption agencies because they hate the church – the end result is the state has even more power over us.

Lots of Dawkins’ friends in the secular movement want to close down all church involvement in education, medicine and adoption agencies because they hate the church – the end result is the state has even more power over us.

Indeed, they are the heirs of, amongst others, the destroyers of the monasteries in England, who can not tolerate any alternative power base (whether material, intellectual or spiritual) beyond their own self-important realm. They are fanatically intolerant – and intolerable.

Venichka

1. Incitement was a common law offence that covered the prompting of all crimes, including criminal damage. Yes, that included “Incitement to commit graffiti” lonnnng before your ‘NuLab’ bogeymen got to it.

2. It has since been replaced with three new statutory offences (that *are* the work of your ‘NuLab’ bogeymen). Please excuse me for incorrectly using ‘incitement’ as shorthand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encouraging_or_assisting_crime#Encouraging_or_assisting_crime

3. I did ask if it was worth reporting it, and before you ask I wasn’t hinting that anyone should do it for me.

Look, I know these authoritarian NuLab bullyboys (and bullygirls) have been in office for a long time, far far far too long infact, but I don’t think that even they have (yet) made “Incitement to commit graffiti” a crime

Well you say that, but under Section 44 of the Serious Crime Act 2007:

A person commits an offence if—
(a) he does an act capable of encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence; and
(b) he intends to encourage or assist its commission.

Still if it’ll wind up some god botherers then I guess its worth a punt

What he said.

On the subject of defacing posters, I’ve long had an urge to write “this poster” over the words “your life” on the ubiquitous “If you don’t like your life you can change it” posters on the tube. I find those posters far more patronising and irritating that this bus one.

“Lots of Dawkins’ friends in the secular movement want to close down all church involvement in education, medicine and adoption agencies” – not this little black duck. I have no problem with religious hospitals and schools, as long as they don’t take a penny of taxpayers money.

Lots of Dawkins’ friends in the secular movement want to close down all church involvement in education, medicine and adoption agencies because they hate the church – the end result is the state has even more power over us.

But, Ed, the church *is* the state, if by “church” you mean the CofE.

And besides, I’d rather have elected representatives making decisions for me than people making decisions based on what their particular chosen imaginary friend thinks.

“I have no problem with religious hospitals and schools, as long as they don’t take a penny of taxpayers money.”
Because, of course, churchgoers don’t have to pay tax

I do agree with the need for the atheist campaign in these times when we see leaders like Tony Blair, George Bush and maybe soon to be Sarah Palin who all openly embrace ‘magic and mysteries’ – charlatanism, cults, faith schools and all kind of religious nonsense. And all kinds of religious fundamentalist loony’s are labeled moderates.

One can only hope they have greater success than their predecessors.

“Custom, tradition, and intellectual laziness lead men to follow their religious leaders blindly. Religions have been the sole cause of the bloody wars that have ravaged mankind. Religions have also been resolutely hostile to philosophical speculation and to scientific research. The so-called holy scriptures are worthless and have done more harm than good, whereas the writings of the ancients like Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, and Hippocrates have rendered much greater service to humanity.”
[…]
“The people who gather round the religious leaders are either feeble-minded, or they are women and adolescents. Religion stifles truth and fosters enmity.”
[…]
“How can anyone think philosophically while listening to old wives’ tales founded on contradictions, which obdurate ignorance, and dogmatism? Gentility of character, friendliness and purity of mind, are found in those who are capable of thinking profoundly on abstruse matters and scientific minutiae.”
Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakarīya al-Rāzi (865-925)

Because, of course, churchgoers don’t have to pay tax

That’s because they are citizens of this state. Not all taxpayers are followers of a religion. The state lays on a non-religious choice

Indeed, they are the heirs of, amongst others, the destroyers of the monasteries in England, who can not tolerate any alternative power base (whether material, intellectual or spiritual) beyond their own self-important realm. They are fanatically intolerant – and intolerable.

I don’t agree with that at all. They are just anti-religious, nothing more. All that “any alternative power base” stuff is baseless.

As for the destroyers of monasteries jibe, this cannot be applied to Dawkins. Only last year he revealed himself to be a “cultural Christian”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7136682.stm

The greatest persecutor, tormentor and killer of Christians have been other Christians who thing the other believe the wrong thing.

BTW
An old religion basher favorite:

“Religion are noxious weeds and fable invented by the ancients, worthless except for those who exploit the credulous masses.”

“They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me that these are a fiction from first to last.
O reason, Thou (alone) speakest the truth
Then perish the fools who forged the religious traditions or interpreted them!”

“Do not suppose the statements of the prophets to be true. Men lived comfortably till they came and spoiled life. The “sacred books” are only such a set of idle tales as any age could have and indeed did actually produce.”

Al-Ma’arri, (973-1057)

And they say atheism isn’t a religion?

It has scriptures (The God Delusion), prophets (Dawkins, Hitchins) and organisations, structures, a ‘church’ (Secular Society; Humanist Society) it runs campaigns trying to convert you…

David T got it right. Religionism is genetic. I lack the religious gene. Pray all you like. Nobody’s listening.

Tom Holland explains why there is much more to Christendom than God, and how even the concepts of neutrality and balance in assessing the worth of cultures and mores are essentially Christian (in the cultural sense) ones.

Like it or not (and I do), our culture is Christian, and that will not change if you dump God, as many have, back to Baron D’Holbach and Thomas Paine. Even Albert Schweitzer described himself as a “post-Christian Christian” (as I would), i.e. a cultural Christian and follower of Christ the Philosopher (and he was a very important Philosopher). Even some of the early Gospels (particularly the Gnostic gospels) took the view that Jesus was only a teacher. Don’t throw the baby (Western culture) out with the bathwater (God).

Reflecting on the sentiments expressed here on the death of Haider two days ago, I find many to be profoundly unChristian. Sometimes I think the Left dislikes Christianity because it is so condemnatory of hate, an emotion that unfortunately seems to motivate the left. Talk of dancing and pissing on the graves of (Haider, Griffin, even Stalin and Hitler) seems to me to be a rather nasty, degrading, and frankly unnecessary, sentiment. If such sentiment makes you feel good, than you are little better than the worst of them.

I posted Dan Dennett’s reasons for pretending to believe in God here. If you happen to be a Muslim, then fear is the dominant one.

Sorry if I have repeated comments that may have been made above – not had time to read them all.

It was the Sack of Constantapole in 1204 by the Latin Knights of the Fourth Crusade that destroyed much of what had survived of the Ancient Greek and Roman Civilizations. A fact that the Greeks and the Greek Orthodox Church still holds against the Roman Catholic Church and Catholics in general. (Sort of like the Irish not forgiving the British for Cromwell, the Penal Laws, etec.) When Byzantium faced the final onslaught from the Turks around 1450 and turned to the West for aid, they were told that such aid would only be forthcoming only if the Byzantines submitted to the authority of Rome. This resulted in angry discussions among the Byzantine nobles with a large minority arguing that it would be better to be ruled by the Turkish Sultan who would them practice their religion, however second class they would be then the Roman Pope who would not let them practice their religion at all.

Does anyone else get weirded out by those religious folks who say that people are only good because of religion? They act like the only reason they’re not running around killing, stealing, and raping because God will punish them. That’s frightening innit?

“IS BIG DAVE STANDING BEHIND ME!!! IS HE>???? IF BIG DAVE ISN@T STANDING BEHIND ME I@M GOING TO KILLLL YOU>??!!!!!!”

I saw this anti-atheist sign once.

Atheism: The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically arranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self-replicating bits which turned into dinosaurs.

Quite amusing, I would say. Put that way, atheism sounds just as silly as religion.

Lasse;

How much would you like to contribute to that campiagn, Lasse? 99% of the world’s people beleive in some kind of higher reality. And they have more children than atheists.

And they say atheism isn’t a religion?

It has scriptures (The God Delusion), prophets (Dawkins, Hitchins) and organisations, structures, a ‘church’ (Secular Society; Humanist Society) it runs campaigns trying to convert you

Utterly mad and stupid.
Yes, atheists write books and try to put their position across – whatever next? They’ll be allowed to appear on the radio next, and that really will be the end of civilisation.
The secular society and the humanist society are not ‘curches’ by any sane definition of the term.

Quite amusing, I would say. Put that way, atheism sounds just as silly as religion

Except that this is not what atheists say. So, apart from distorting the atheist position quite drastically, you are of course quite correct.

Does anyone else get weirded out by those religious folks who say that people are only good because of religion?

Yes, I always tell such people that they are idiots.

You don’t get it do you, the advancements during the imperial caliphates was not the success of monotheistic magic and mysteries but the success of secular governance, as the advancements of western Europe was the success of secular governance not monotheistic magic and mysteries.

No, you don’t get it. Islam is, has and always will be redundant to the entire human enterprise.

It has virtually no real achievements to speak of. During the Caliphates you constantly invoke, the majority of the inahbitants of what we now call the Arabo-Muslim world were neither Muslim nor Arab.

Did you not know that?

It was the insight and mental rigour of these non-Muslims, the intellectual left-overs from both Persia and Levantine Byzance, that kited the caliphate’s “brilliance”.

Back then, Islam kited off of the people it invaded, just as mohammed kited his ’scripture’ off those of the Christians and Jews and just as radical islamists now kite their goals and programme off the memes and vocabulary of progressive leftists.

The sheer idiocy, superstition and backwardness chactersing the Muslim world is all that’s left when the wealth and intellectual vibrancy of those who’ve been conquered have been exhausated.

Redundancies are always mediocre…and boring.

Islam doesn’t just eshew innovation, it fears it like the wrath of god. And so when there are virtually no non-muslims left to exploit, now the case in the mid-east, its innate stupidity and piss-poor performance come to the fore.

Islam occupies N. Africa ( grainery of Rome), the Nile delta ( for millenia a net exporter of foodstuffs) and the Fertile Crescent ( now rather infertile), and yet despite all of these invaluable agricultural jewels, the islamic world is consistently unable to even feed itself.

Believe me, Islam does ‘intellectual’ about as well as it does agriculture.

‘There’s probably no God’ is fine wording as far as i’m concerned, there is no proof to definitely say there is no god (he could turn up tomorrow and smite two bendy buses for all we know).
However there has in the long history of gods been no proof given for divine existence – rather disappointing for the supreme being(s). To say ‘there is no god’ would be a belief not backed up by evidence and a difficult position to defend against the god based beliefs. It is however not looking good for god in the evidence stakes. Also I cant see any cowardice in not using the word ‘Allah’ I think most Muslims would get the point, besides ‘god’ nicely covers the spectrum from Allah to Zeus.

No, Oxfordonian, I am merely casting a detached social scientist’s eye over the observable features of the atheist movement to find that it conforms to a religion in all respects.

It attempts to explain the human condition in atheistic rather than theistic terms, but this is still a faith position since god can neither be proved not disproved scientifically.

Texts/doctrines
Foundational figures/leaders
Organisational structure/finance/institutions
Missionary zeal

All the things that atheists hate about religion in fact!

Richard Feynman on Faith and Certainty

You have a highly personal definition of the nineteenth century, Ven, which either produced something you don’t like, or, if the dates won’t fit, it is an ancestor of something you don’t like. Is this Jansenism or something? Or casuistry? Or Thomism? Or merely Venism?

So I can only roll call:- intellectuals – Darwin, JS Mill; in literature the great novels – Eliot, Tolstoy, Flaubert and about fifty others; poetry, Browning, Tennyson and I’ll even chuck in Gerard Manley Hopkins; in music – start off with Beethoven and end with Debussy and all the ones in between; on technology – the railway train and the bicycle, the two greatest inventions for motion ever and the great openers of worlds. Photography; cinema; telephone; electricity. In fact, if your distaste for the nineteenth century was sincere, you wouldn’t be blogging.

As for idiotism, it’s been around for as long as mankind. I wouldn’t blame the nineteenth century for it.

In the US there is a prominent (whose name escapes me now) left-wing labor lawyer/intellectual who was raised in the Jewish faith, became a declared atheist until his early sixties, then converted to Catholicism. When asked why Catholicism of all faiths, he replied that he had to choose a religion with a firm grasp on the concept of hell, else what would be the purpose of going to Church? Might as well be out for a walk, reading a good book or enjoying a good movie otherwise……..

I fear I may have inadvertently caught a twinge of Jansenism many years ago somewhere (probably Glasgow) that is difficult to shake off…

But yes, those are mostly good points

tardzilla, you have a point. For example, gardening:

Scripture: How to Be a Gardener, by Alan Titchmarsh.
Prophets: Monty Don, Peter Seabrooke.
Organisation: Royal Horticultural Society.

QED*!

*NB: only if one’s brain is rotted by years of justifying a belief in fairies,

Morgoth –

If there was no God then you would expect that as our scientific knowledge increased so would our understanding of our origins of the universe.

But in fact the reverse has happened. As we have found out more and more we have become more perplexed not less. It was easy to be a full throated atheist in Victorian times when materialism seemed a viable philosophical approach.

It’s a lot more difficult now in my judgement, though if you are prepared to ignore all the evidence you can of course be a happy atheist (and if your parents were religious nutters I can understand why that might afford you some comfort, irrational though that is).

Alcuin –

Thomas Paine didn’t dump God – he was a deist. He dumped Christianity. Quite a different matter I would say.

No, Oxfordonian, I am merely casting a detached social scientist’s eye over the observable features of the atheist movement to find that it conforms to a religion in all respects.

You do no such thing: you claim this, but with nil evidence.

It attempts to explain the human condition in atheistic rather than theistic terms, but this is still a faith position since god can neither be proved not disproved scientifically.

A complete distortion. The position that there is no god because there is no evidence for his existence, is not a faith one but a rational empiricist one. It is no more a position of faith than to say that there are no pink flying elephants: there is exactly as much evidence for the existence of god as there is for pink flying elephants, namely ni. If you believe in the former, you should believe in the latter.

Texts/doctrines
Foundational figures/leaders
Organisational structure/finance/institutions
Missionary zeal

Nonsense. There are no textual ‘doctrines’. There are books written by individuals. There is no such thing as a sacred canon that all have to follow, or even one that all do follow.
There are no foundational figures that one has to follow, only individuals who you may agree with or not (unlike the pope, for example).
There are NO organisational structure/finance/institutions, only talking clubs.

So all you have done is invent a ridiculous strawman. Social scientist, my foot.

If there was no God then you would expect that as our scientific knowledge increased so would our understanding of our origins of the universe.

But in fact the reverse has happened. As we have found out more and more we have become more perplexed not less.

What ignorant nonsense. Our knowledge has increased hugely year on year, ever since we have become free of religious persecution in the West. We are less perplexed, not more: our knowledge has moved closer to the origin of the universe all the time. But philosophers of science are well aware that the human mind is a finite instrument, therefore it has physical and epistemological limits.

John P, 6:21: bravo!

I don’t believe a truly atheist society can last for very long

Stated with nil evidence, like a good deist.

‘But in fact the reverse has happened. As we have found out more and more we have become more perplexed not less’

More answers always seem to lead to more questions. Life is fantastic like that. The overly theistic approach always seems to be to close the book after page one and say that’s it I’m done, that to me is to ignore all evidence and I’ve never seen the draw in that kind of life.

Actually, Oxfordian, I find both the basic tenets of atheism and established religions to be quite ridiculous. I tend to believe there’s another explanation for it all…

What are the ‘basic tenets’ of atheism?

As far as I am aware, the only atheist tenet is that, given the total absence of evidence, it is highly likely that God does not exist.

Quite why you find this proposition ridiculous I don’t know.

‘A complete distortion. The position that there is no god because there is no evidence for his existence, is not a faith one but a rational empiricist one. It is no more a position of faith than to say that there are no pink flying elephants: there is exactly as much evidence for the existence of god as there is for pink flying elephants, namely ni. If you believe in the former, you should believe in the latter.’

David Hume, the arch sceptic, pretty much demolished the case for ‘rational’ empiricism when he noted that observation is not inherently rational; it is based on sensory perception, custom and presumption.

To argue that there is no God because no evidence can be found is not rational.

The rational position is to say you don’t know, because such a postulate as the existence of God is non-provable. Negative ‘evidence’ is precisely that – no evidence at all.

devorgilla: I think you are having a problem with the word proof as most people would use it. Given that you hypothesize a deity for which there is no evidence, its up to you to provide proof – its not up to us to disprove it.

To argue that there is no God because no evidence can be found is not rational. The rational position is to say you don’t know, because such a postulate as the existence of God is non-provable. Negative ‘evidence’ is precisely that – no evidence at all..

Eh?

What kind of atheists argue that there definitely isn’t a God?

‘Agricultural improvements ( a mini industrial revolution, actually) took place in Northern Europe, COMPLETELY independant of Islam. It was a revolution that brought us the modern horse collar ( allows horse to pull more more without choking) and the wind/water mills which allow us to process far more grain far more easily.

Those two indigenous european inventions revolutionised agriculture and paved the way for a vast economic and intellectual revival.’

There are also the developments in the iron plough. European soils are heavy, unlike those of the Near East and needed a more intensive form of plough.

‘To argue that there is no God because no evidence can be found is not rational.’

You have to remember that in all god stories these gods are given attributes and legends attached to them. As these legends are proven to be incorrect or have a non deistic explainable origin the the value of the god hypothesis decreases.
There may be evidence yet to be unearthed that we are ruled over by the divine spaghetti monster (I forget his full title, may he/she/it forgive me) but as evidence for existing religions crumbles that religions god suffers through association. A man who’s story doesn’t stand up in court is bound to suffer the consequences.

‘devorgilla: I think you are having a problem with the word proof as most people would use it. Given that you hypothesize a deity for which there is no evidence, its up to you to provide proof – its not up to us to disprove it.’

That’s not exactly what I’m saying. For one thing, I don’t have any kind of agenda – such as these bus people have – to convert you to a belief or disbelief in god. I am merely pointing out their ‘messianic evagelism’ and I wonder what motivates it?

There is no ‘proof’ for god in the accepted scientific sense. The hypothesis is not empirically testable. Religious people accept this. Theology (knowledge of god acquired through supernatural means such as prophecy) and science (knowledge of the natural world through ‘natural’, ie ordinary, rational, means) are two distinct fields. Never the twain shall meet.

Simply stated, you can’t find out about science via theology and you can’t find out about god via science. Plus, if there were definite proof of god, there would be no need for faith, upon which religion as a spiritual condition, rests.

Faith is not rational – we will agree on that?

(To the religious faith is supra-rational. To the non-religious faith is sub-rational).

To the religious, faith is a special quality or condition. It is spiritual.

‘You have to remember that in all god stories these gods are given attributes and legends attached to them. As these legends are proven to be incorrect or have a non deistic explainable origin the the value of the god hypothesis decreases.’

Ah! Here we get to the centre of the Dawkins’ fixation! Dawkins apparently ‘hates’ ‘religion’ because it is unscientific. He rejects god or gods as an explanatory model for physical reality. It apparently offends him deeply that religion has lingered on post-Darwin. He surmises deeply counter-cultural forces are at work, which to his own mind, is a form of demonic possession. As chief witch hunter general, he is on an illiberal mission to stamp this out.

Few Christians these days would disagree with Darwin. The Genesis account is accepted as a kind of allegory, not for life’s origins, but for deeper spiritual truths relating to the interior life. The scientific account of life’s origins is accepted.

This is a huge puzzle to a man who is about as psychic as a brick.

if you are prepared to ignore all the evidence you can of course be a happy atheist

I am intrigued. Field, please enlightenus as to to evidence of theism

Nearly O

You quote me:

“If there was no God then you would expect that as our scientific knowledge increased so would our understanding of our origins of the universe.

But in fact the reverse has happened. As we have found out more and more we have become more perplexed not less.”

And then say in response:

“What ignorant nonsense. Our knowledge has increased hugely year on year, ever since we have become free of religious persecution in the West. We are less perplexed, not more: our knowledge has moved closer to the origin of the universe all the time. But philosophers of science are well aware that the human mind is a finite instrument, therefore it has physical and epistemological limits.”

How typical of you to confuse knowledge with understanding.

Suppose I discovered that I was adopted. I might begin to research my
origins prior to adoption. I would now know a lot more about myself and my origins, but if I don’t find my natural parents I may be MORE perplexed about my origins, not less, even though previously I was more ignorant of my origins.

Probably a bit too subtle for you that .

Which is why you hide behind these “epistemological limits”. So now we are supposed to believe that it is these limits that are preventing us understanding the origins of the cosmos and not the fact that there are a 101 competing theories?

Herman –

Always happy to oblige.

In keeping with the Socratic method, I’ll illustrate what I mean with a question:

“Can you observe consciousness?”

What do you think?

I don’t see anything wrong with this campaign slogan. They are suggesting that it is probable that there is no Divinity. They are not saying there isn’t or is one and leave open those positions to those who subscribe to them. This is extremely broad and inclusive – whats the problem?

John P
“Was it Christians or Muslims who set the Great Library of Alexandia ablaze destroying many of the works of the Ancient World?”

-the library was damaged by a series of events and was in a poor shape by the time the Mohammedans got there. And while your talking about Christians they weren’t devoid of extremism either – they burnt a lot of texts as well that were critical of Christianity eg. Porphyry’s “Against the Christians” comes to mind.

*And lets not forget Hypatia’s lynching in Alexandria which was a particularly unpleasant example of Christian intolerance.

While we’re at it, how about the achievements of societies in which no child-abuse goes on?

Teaching children that Satan is going to burn them eternally if they think for themselves is the worst sort of child abuse.

Well many atheists don’t do that, but with God out of the way, there may be a better chance to do so through humanism. Of course, they may simply start worrying about dietary supplements, natural childbirth or something else instead, but it’s a start.

Very funny.

This thread will take me the rest of my life to read. Has Fwanker poked his head in to growl and blame atheism on neocons and Jews yet?

Believe me, Islam does ‘intellectual’ about as well as it does agriculture.

lol

Teaching children that Satan is going to burn them eternally if they think for themselves is the worst sort of child abuse.

-yeah, its so much worse than child-rape or hospitalisation through violence…

What a load of absolute cobblers. The inference is that poeple “worry and don’t ” enjoy life ” solely because of their relgious beliefs. Many people adopt a religious belief in order to deal with their anxieties. I know the Alpha course seems to appeal to the anxious middle class. Personally, I think anybody who claims to know what’s going on, is deluded, which is why I’m a committed agnostic. My mother’s death was almost certainly a suicide. My Uncle definitely committed suicide. Neither of them were prompted into taking their lives because they were suffering mentally from any Religious belief they might have had.

…ah…I do realise that the Atheist campaign might not be suggesting that Religious belief isn’t the cause of the worry, unlike some of the posts above. The Atheist point of view fails to address the roots of existential anxiety that do cause people to “worry” in the first place. Somply telling people not to worry is not very sophisticated.

How typical of you to confuse knowledge with understanding.

How typical of you to play with words. Are you a Jesuit priest?
Believing in god gives you nil understanding and 100% delusion.

if I don’t find my natural parents I may be MORE perplexed about my origins, not less, even though previously I was more ignorant of my origins.

Your belief in god is akin to believing you were brought by the stork – that’s neither knowledge nor understanding, merely self-delusion.

Probably a bit too subtle for you that .

Typical pompous drivel from a patronising wanker.

Which is why you hide behind these “epistemological limits”. So now we are supposed to believe that it is these limits that are preventing us understanding the origins of the cosmos and not the fact that there are a 101 competing theories?

Your ignorance about science is breathtaking. Nobody has said that we have reached complete knowledge.
In fact, I said that we cannot reach complete knowledge – can you even read?

Call it ‘hide’ if you like. You are clearly impervious to non-religious views.

The rational position is to say you don’t know, because such a postulate as the existence of God is non-provable.

About as rational as to say that you don’t know whether pink flying elephants exist – after all, we may not have discovered the evidence for their existence yet … but if you want to call this position rational, be my guest. After all, words mean what you want them to mean.

The rational position is to say you don’t know, because such a postulate as the existence of God is non-provable.

Agreed, but I’d say that the lack of evidence for the existence of something ought to carry more weight than the lack of evidence for something’s absence because otherwise we’d be applying the “don’t know” principle to anything and everything. So technically we don’t know, but I think the odds are against.

My in-laws disagree about this, but fortunately as tolerant and reasonable people it never occurs to us to have endless arguments where we try to prove each other wrong.

I agree, it’s a fairly tedious argument. It’s also complicated because people might not be arguing about the same thing. If one is talking about God as some sort of bearded patriarch doling out divine justice to us lot down here then the arguments for such a being seemed to be based purely on faith as opposed to if one talks about “god” in a more abstract sense, maybe as a metaphor for a broader meaning to existence than our own individual experience. Some might give this meaning to the sense of the numinous.

There is a lot of hate out there, and a lot is aimed at us Christians, unfairly I believe. There are of course always bad ones amongst ANY movement, BUT the work that Christians do in outreach and humanitarian aid is arguably unequalled.

I see the Rise of Atheism is again on the March, my fear is tha Atheism whilst it actually drives people INTO Church and not away from it, seeks a very sef serving existence. The Current Bus Campaign that seeks to counter the ALPHA courses does not offer a substitute merely a “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, funny, seems to lack confidence to me lol

As for the accusation of money making by Christians, A agree that Pastors and leaders should not be making a living out of it BUT the Atheists make lots of money for themselves, at least the Christians do OUTREACH programs and fund others less fortunate than themselves.

Just seen The Atheist Cheerleader Pat Condells Online Shop, he must be making a mint!

There is a lot wrong with some people who profess to being a Christian BUT a true Christian should recognise that and work towards straightening themselves out, as Jesus said “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”, so much for Dawkins asssertion that thinking is an anethama to Christian life.

As Hook said “as a set of cognitive beliefs, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability”

(not the New Order bassist)

An atheist is someone who believes that there is no God or gods. An atheist does not *know* that there is no God or gods to the extent that it is impossible to prove a negative. I presume this is the reason for the “probably” in the slogan.

The specific properties attributed to God by serious Christians (eg Catholics or Evengelicals) are mutualy inconsistent and incoherent so I am certain, as one can be, that that kind of God does not exist. On the other hand it is not logically impossible that there could be some sort of lower level demi-God that was not all powerful or all knowing – just very very unlikely.

Liamalpha makes an interesting point. Why is Richard Dawkins hedging his bet? He is going no further than timidly advancing the cautious hypothesis that there is “probably” no God.

This is hardly the red-blooded atheism we have come to expect from young Mr Dawkins. What next? He is laying himself open to the suspicion that before you can say Joseph Ratzinger, he’ll be following in the Roman footsteps of Monsignor Lynton-Blair.

Young Mr Dawkins? The man’s 67½. That’s very nearly 67¾!

Hector Avalos: How Archaeology Killed Biblical History

-the library was damaged by a series of events and was in a poor shape by the time the Mohammedans got there. And while your talking about Christians they weren’t devoid of extremism either – they burnt a lot of texts as well that were critical of Christianity eg. Porphyry’s “Against the Christians” comes to mind.

Yes it was damaged by a “series of events”

But the coup de grâce was delivered by Mullah Omar, Mo’s immediate successor.

Upon seeing the library and before setting it alight he thundered:” Whatever is in that library but which is not in the Koran is worthless and whatever is in that library that has value will already be in the Koran.

Mullah Omar set, thus, the tone for Islam’s subsequent intellectual rise.

The ignorant savage destroyed unique works of incalculable value, and that loss alone set humanity back centuries.

If you spend any amount of time reading the works, ideas and edicts of the Islamic world’s finest ’scholars’ and ‘theologians’, one is struck by their idiocy and incoherence, not to mention base superstitions.

I said it before and I,ll say it again; Islam took what were for millenia the most advanced, enlightened and prosperous regions of the globe…N. Africa, Egypt, The Fertile Crescent, Byzantium, Persia, The sind…and in only a few short centuries turned them into irrelevant backwaters that now contribute nothing to the common good of mankind.

And the scary thig is, radical, irony tone-deaf Islamists, like The Brotherhood, want to spread their ‘enlightenment’, by force if necessary, so that all of mankind can benefit. They are determined to spring us (The West) from our prison of ignorance and backwardness, even if it kills us!

As for atheism? Why does Mr Dawkins assume believers fret about their lives? Christianity when imbibed in the proper dose can enhance one’s life and one’s appreciation of everything.

It’s somewhat akin to drinking a glass of wine before dinner in order to enhance the entire dining experience.

“The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.”
– St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram

“There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity…

It is this which drives us to try to discover the secrets of nature, those secrets beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which men should not wish to learn…”
- St. Augustine (354-430)

It is this which drives us to try to discover the secrets of nature, those secrets beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which men should not wish to learn…”

Your mote/beam ( Islam has a whole lumberyard in its eye) routine is pointless.

Is they any use in telling you that Islam doesn’t do mathematics, and that it has virtually no intellectual achievements.

Even many of the Islamic world’s architectural treasures were designed and built by non-Muslims, as well, you know.

Instread of quoting obscure passages from St Augustine, perhaps you should citically investigate claims Islam has made over the years concerning “its” intellectual discoveries.

Lie plastered upon lie is just about all you’ll find.

And the sheer idiocy we see today has been the story all along.

There is a lot of hate out there, and a lot of it is aimed by Christians at atheists.
Obviously, these days it is mostly generated by other theists, those coming from the sick sewers of Islam.

I asked Herman –

“Can you observe consciousness?”

Answer came there none and sweet silence reigned.

Nearly O works himself (got to be a him surely) up into another frenzy without demonstrating I am wrong.

The situation now is that there are numerous highly conflicting theories about cosmological origins, mostly insusceptible to experimentation.

Contrast that with the age of Einstein or even more that happy time in the 19th century when I think it was Kelvin or some other leading scientist said all the big problems in physics had been resolved.

This is not a picture of us marching confidently to ever more complete knowledge. This is a picture of a break down in understanding. Yes we can see there are many more pieces of the jigsaw strewn under the floorboards in the dark, but we haven’t a clue how they fit together.

I think it is reasonable to say that while with something like geology we have moved to an almost complete understanding of how our planet came to have the morphology it does – the picture with physics is one of increasing perplexity. If the world was really as materialists and now physicalists would like us to believe, then I think we would proceeding more along geological than physical lines. It seems pretty clear to me that there are fundamental mysteries at the heart of existence which science ain’t crack any time soon and if it does crack them then I think it might be in the direction of accepting there is a creative intelligence at work in or behind the cosmos.

Field’s breakdown in understanding, to be sure, without a question.

His utter certainty that I am male is of a piece with his certainty that there is a god, and that all atheists are fools.

I can’t be bothered to continue arguing with such a limited intellect, who can’t even manage to read a simple rational paragraph without completely missing the point.

“I can’t be bothered to continue arguing”

There is a God that answers prayers after all…

The term Christianity, is these days a large umbrella group of different opinions, it is a shame, I am a Christian yet I embrace Science, for me Science is mans understanding of God’s complex intelligence, we are NOT to be scared of curiousity, but there are so things so obvious it would be foolhardy to persue. If a man didnt believe in the laws of Gravity, he will still hit the ground at roughly the same speed as a person who does, and you would not persue the curiousity of jumping from a tall building to satisfy your knowledge of the Laws of Gravity, would you?

For me God exists, he was revealed in his Son Jesus Christ, if an Atheist has actually read the scriptures and still disagrees with them then so be it, he is free to not believe, Faith cannot and should never be taught by compulsion.

St Augustines comments

“It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.

– The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408]

With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.”

Field, you really are a sad, ignorant wanker.

Not sad.

Happy to know I am ignorant – as Socrates was (better than not knowing you are ignorant).

As for the last one, comment is free as they say.

For religious folk like field who suggest “I can’t be bothered to continue arguing”

“There is a God that answers prayers after all…”

They sure seem a bit lost when its quite obvious they infact argue like school kids .

But thats all part of the importance of this bus campaign its about enlightening the religious who with such bigotry , are quite happy to see pro religious campaigns yet attack and show such complete intolerance of any other way of thinking .

The first step to any change is to first get the attention of those that need to be entering into discussion ,and this bus campaign judging by the extent of outcry from the biased religious seems to most definitely have achieved that first step.

Its a wonderful thing .

Atheism is the belief that there is no God. However, if an atheist lives by ruling his or her own life, wouldn’t that in turn make the atheist his or her own god, thus disproving atheism from the beginning? And, if an atheist, in a sense, becomes his or her own god, yet does not BELIEVE in a God, wouldn’t that disprove his or her own existence? I fail to see the reasoning behind such ignorance.

Dan –

Have you had Irony Bypass Surgery or something? Anyway, I’m not religious. You can conclude there is a deity without adopting a religion you know. And you can only be religious if you do follow a religion (however hapazardly) or several (however haphazardly). I don’t follow any religions.

Erica –

What you say is complete nonsense. A God or deity is an entity with certain attributes (e.g the capacity to generate or create a cosmos) that don’t accord with those of a human being. So it is nonsense to say that a human being can become a God. If you mean “take the place of God as far as possible”, then say so. But even then it’s a very weak argument that could be batted away by even the slowest of atheists.

I am arguing for the existence of a deity on rational grounds, not because someone has told me to.

As already indicated I welcome the campaign and engagement of atheists in debate with theists and deists (and followers of non-theistic religions, such as Buddhism and Taoism).

82,000 ish.
Those alpha course adverts must really have been getting on peoples nerves.

Can’t help thinking that sort of money could do some real good in the world rather than just allow some smug atheists to congratulate eachother on how clever they are

Bet dawkins is pleased he remembered to cap his matching contributions.

Religous types broadly supportive… Including friend of HP Inayat Bunglawala of MCB.
http://foxnews.proteus.com/content.html?contentId=13365

Religous ‘think tank’ theos has donated on the basis that the slogan is so bad it’ll drive people into churches

‘Stop worrying and enjoy life’ is rather good advice. Simply to make vulnerable people uneasy is pretty ghastly, I agree.
But there it is, in Matthew 11 v28 – Christ recorded as saying ‘Come to me..’ and promising so much, so graciously. Go there and read (just that little bit) with an open heart – OK, you can protest that it may be beautiful but not a living person speaking – but perhaps such an appeal might be worth a bit of honest, even if sceptical, following up. (’If it’s you, please convince me’ seems to me a strong and honest approach).
It’s not failing to be able to believe that’s the death of us – it’s deliberate hard-heartedness. And that’s misery, anyway; how can you enjoy life like that?

field –

IF what I had said was “nonsense,” as you call it, anyone of any knowledge would not have replied. Someone with sense would have disregarded my comment and said nothing in return. Oh, and by the way, you will notice I said an atheist is his or her own god, not God. There is a difference. One is a supreme and divine Ruler while the other is just a sad attempt at allowing oneself or another pathetic idol to rule one’s life. And yes, dear, anyone who does not serve God serves another. For you, I would say you serve a god of ignorance, or yourself, if that suits you better. I could argue all day on this subject. Because I serve a God with no limits, my replies too, are unlimited. Though I do hate to insult, as it’s not very desirable or attractive, I must revert back to my childish ways and say “you started it.” And since my argument still stands, I would have to say no, field, even YOU couldn’t bat it away.

Now then, why don’t you run along and read some books by other atheists? Maybe some C.S. Lewis? Lee Strobel? Oh, wait…they believe in God now. Because THEY had the nerve to try to disprove God’s existence. And guess what. He won. When you decide to take a rational approach to disprove God yourself, comment back. I’m sure that if you actually set out to do it, you’d be quite humbled and admit yourself the fool that you obviously are. Bet you’d become a Christian, too. Many mediocre people have been in your place before…they accepted God and became great. I don’t have to prove my God exists, nor must I defend Him. YOU have to convince the world that we just appeared out of thin air. Good luck!

Well done Richard Dawkins!… Interest in God was dwindling and thanks to your campaign it has made people think about God. Remember God is Sovereign and He is ultimately in control of everything… including your campaign!

http://www.rubensarrion.com