Why aren't atheists agnostic?

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greenblue
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27 May 2007, 12:40 pm

Ragtime wrote:

greenblue wrote:

Ragtime wrote:

Umm, it wasn't meant to. I quoted verses to show why I have the theory I mentioned. Quoting the Bible shows those who don't believe in it why someone who believes in it might draw a certain conclusion from it.

Yes, and that always have been a problem

Huh?

The Bible is not the "Word of God" is just a book written by people who believed the world was flat.

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27 May 2007, 12:40 pm

Ragtime wrote:

greenblue wrote:

And quoting the Bible doesn't do much for people who don't believe in it.

Doesn't that just boil down to using "Because the Bible says so" to back up whatever it is you are trying to say? To a non-believer, it doesn't really have much effect.

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greenblue
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27 May 2007, 12:45 pm

Sopho wrote:

No. I just don't know what hatred you mean. Do you mean why do I hate religion? Why do I hate Christians? Why am I full of hate in general? What?

Are you really full of hate Soph?
When you say f**k everyone, what do you exactly mean?
I am not going against you, I just wanna know for myself and for everyone

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27 May 2007, 12:47 pm

greenblue wrote:

Sopho wrote:

No. I just don't know what hatred you mean. Do you mean why do I hate religion? Why do I hate Christians? Why am I full of hate in general? What?

Are you really full of hate Soph?
When you say f**k everyone, what do you exactly mean?
I am not going against you, I just wanna know

No, I'm not full of hate. I don't hate Christians or religion either. I was just asking if that was what he meant.
By 'f**k everyone', I wasn't being serious.

greenblue
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27 May 2007, 12:48 pm

Xenon wrote:

Doesn't that just boil down to using "Because the Bible says so" to back up whatever it is you are trying to say? To a non-believer, it doesn't really have much effect.

Exactly, which is also very annoying when is used to support Homophobia.

greenblue
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27 May 2007, 12:50 pm

Sopho wrote:

greenblue wrote:

Sopho wrote:

No. I just don't know what hatred you mean. Do you mean why do I hate religion? Why do I hate Christians? Why am I full of hate in general? What?

Are you really full of hate Soph?
When you say f**k everyone, what do you exactly mean?
I am not going against you, I just wanna know

No, I'm not full of hate. I don't hate Christians or religion either. I was just asking if that was what he meant.
By 'f**k everyone', I wasn't being serious.

Ok, you just get upset because of what religion represents in your life, I totally understand that.

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27 May 2007, 12:50 pm

greenblue wrote:

Xenon wrote:

Doesn't that just boil down to using "Because the Bible says so" to back up whatever it is you are trying to say? To a non-believer, it doesn't really have much effect.

Exactly, which is also very annoying when is used to support Homophobia.

Robert A. Heinlein (a science fiction writer, for whose who don't recognize the name) once suggested that one could the Bible to justify any viewpoint.

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greenblue
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27 May 2007, 1:04 pm

Xenon wrote:

greenblue wrote:

Xenon wrote:

Doesn't that just boil down to using "Because the Bible says so" to back up whatever it is you are trying to say? To a non-believer, it doesn't really have much effect.

Exactly, which is also very annoying when is used to support Homophobia.

Robert A. Heinlein (a science fiction writer, for whose who don't recognize the name) once suggested that one could the Bible to justify any viewpoint.

I think that is true, there are a lot of interpretations of the Bible, any religion sect has their own different way to view it, there are many who take it literal and others take it in a different way. Catholics and Proestants have different versions of the Bible.

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27 May 2007, 1:06 pm

Xenon wrote:

Ragtime wrote:

greenblue wrote:

And quoting the Bible doesn't do much for people who don't believe in it.

Doesn't that just boil down to using "Because the Bible says so" to back up whatever it is you are trying to say? To a non-believer, it doesn't really have much effect.

Fine. If it has no effect, then it's immaterial to object to. It's something called: explaining my position. Discussion is not possible without it. You're being offended by my explaining where I'm coming from, and I don't see why.

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27 May 2007, 1:08 pm

Ragtime wrote:

Xenon wrote:

Ragtime wrote:

greenblue wrote:

And quoting the Bible doesn't do much for people who don't believe in it.

Doesn't that just boil down to using "Because the Bible says so" to back up whatever it is you are trying to say? To a non-believer, it doesn't really have much effect.

Yes but you're not explaining your position properly. I wouldn't say I believe X, because [quote from book about it].

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27 May 2007, 1:22 pm

Sopho wrote:

Ragtime wrote:

Sopho wrote:

Ragtime wrote:

Sopho wrote:

Other animals aren't idiotic enough to believe in a god.

I would argue that they're not supercilious enough not to. For instance, animals don't hate, so is your hatred a "higher function", or, as you put it, "idiotic"?

What hatred?

Predictable. Going the "plausible denial" route, huh?

No. I just don't know what hatred you mean. Do you mean why do I hate religion? Why do I hate Christians? Why am I full of hate in general? What?

No, no, I don't mean a specific dispensation of hatred, I mean hatred, itself.

1. I'll posit that you have hatred (you may correct me on this).

2. Animals don't have hatred.

3. You, and others, have said animals aren't smart enough to consider religious concepts.

4. You've also said that humans are more "idiotic" than animals.

5. So, is animals' lack of hatred a lack of intelligence, similar to the lack of intelligence which disallows them religion? Or do they simply lack the human idiocy to be hateful, as you seem to be?

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27 May 2007, 1:29 pm

Cyanide wrote:

Atheist: "I believe God doesn't exist"
Agnostic: "God may exist, but he may not."

I'm an atheist because 'What is stated without proof, can be denied without proof' (Euclid). Also because of Occam's razor - reject the hypothesis with the most assumptions if there is no evidence favouring it over simpler hypotheses. Hence, reject supernatural assumptions like gods and the afterlife.
There are also many specific issues with particular religions. In any case, omnipotence is not logically self-consistent (can God create a stone so heavy he cannot lift it?), and I have yet to hear a good explanation of how the world's state is compatible with a loving god (there was some medieval sect that claimed that the world had in fact been created by the devil, and souls had been put in it by God as a punishment).
Finally, organised religion has served too many oppresors too well for me to have much sympathy for it.

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greenblue
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27 May 2007, 1:33 pm

Ragtime wrote:

3. You, and others, have said animals aren't smart enough to consider religious concepts.

4. You've also said that humans are more "idiotic" than animals.

5. So, is animals' lack of hatred a lack of intelligence, similar to the lack of intelligence which disallows them religion? Or do they simply lack the human idiocy to be hateful, as you seem to be?

1. Animals don't have Self Awareness, that disallows them of Religion and Philosophy.

2. I interpret Idiotic as Ignorance, then Humans are sometimes Ignorants.

Last edited by greenblue on 27 May 2007, 1:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Ragtime
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27 May 2007, 1:37 pm

greenblue wrote:

Xenon wrote:

greenblue wrote:

Xenon wrote:

Doesn't that just boil down to using "Because the Bible says so" to back up whatever it is you are trying to say? To a non-believer, it doesn't really have much effect.

Exactly, which is also very annoying when is used to support Homophobia.

Robert A. Heinlein (a science fiction writer, for whose who don't recognize the name) once suggested that one could the Bible to justify any viewpoint.

Ha! That's hardly just true of the Bible. You can take any sufficiently complex document and do the same thing.

*That doesn't mean that the meaning you give the text is what the text writer meant. Thinking otherwise is believing in isogesis, or, "reading meaning into a text". Proper Bible scholarship involves exegesis, or determining through intensive historical studies what the writers of the text meant when they wrote it. A modern example of isogesis is those Americans who say that the original writers of our Constitution had abortion on their minds when they wrote it. It's isogesis because there is no indication from the text whatsoever that abortion was being considered or addressed during the writing process.

Exegesis would be simply taking the text as is, except when it's quite unclear, whereupon diligent study is undertaken of extra-Constitutional historical documents which tend to either support or not support a certain meaning of the text.

So, isogesis is "an interpretation" of the text.
Exegesis is the hard study of the original meaning of the text.

Last edited by Ragtime on 27 May 2007, 1:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sopho
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27 May 2007, 1:42 pm

Ragtime wrote:

1. I don't believe I have hatred.

2. Humans are animals. Plenty of humans do.

3. I never said that.

4. Yes. Humans are more 'idiotic' that other animals IMO.

5. It has nothing to do with hate. Other animals do not seem to sit around trying to explain their own existence etc. Humans do. But because we're not intelligent enough to comprehend these kind of things, we create religions and belief systems to help up feel more secure. Other animals don't need this.
And I am not hateful.

greenblue
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27 May 2007, 1:49 pm

Sopho wrote:

Other animals do not seem to sit around trying to explain their own existence etc. Humans do. But because we're not intelligent enough to comprehend these kind of things, we create religions and belief systems to help up feel more secure. Other animals don't need this.

AMEN!

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