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Thanx for the explanation, freedombecki.He was just making a joke, pacer. Some very enchanting and delightful speakers begin their case with a joke. "I swear to God I am an atheist," is such a statement. It was meant to be amusing.
He believes in God, doesn't wish to go into detail here to cause a stir or offend. It's just that he was trying to break a little ice. It wakes up the students in an auditorium and makes them wish to listen once they "get it."
Get it?
If God is a necessary condition of objective morality, where would mankind ascertain a means of objective morality, if God did not exist?
Dostoevsky once wrote: 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted'.
Please do not shoot the messenger. I lifted the topic from another website...thought it would generate an interesting discussion on this board. Sorry if I offended.
I agree it is not necessary to believe in God or divine punishment in order to be a moral person. I believe morality is biological and that all mankind is inherently good. Mankind is intrinsically compassionate and can certainly distinguish between right and wrong and good and evil without a set of commandments.
As a police officer for 20 years, I've seen and been near many, many people when they have passed from this earth. I have held broken bodies, held their face in my hands reaching through shattered windshields, held their hands and told them that they would be okay, even if I knew that they wouldn't. I held my 41 day old son in my arms while he passed away. And I sat holding her hand as the only woman I have ever loved slipped away to be with her father and the son we lost in heaven.
When someone dies, you can feel it. You don't even have to be looking and you can feel it when their soul slips from this earth into heaven or what ever you want to call it. I can't even describe it but it is something that is real and it is palpable.
I know of many instances as well of people who had tumors, cancers, sicknesses that should have taken their lives come from doctor visits only to report that those things are just gone. No sign. Nothing. Just gone and cured.
God is real and He is alive, working with His children each and every day. As an evangelical Christian I choose to believe that the Christian bible is the written word of God and that Jesus Christ was His living Son. But I also have nothing but respect and admiration for Catholics and Jewish followers of their faith. As an American, I don't care if you wish to worship door knobs, that is your right as a citizen.
As for athiests, I have no animosity because when I was young, I was a devoted athiest. I do pity athiests because they put their faith into a flawed organism as their supreme being. If man is the height of this universe and there is no more, then my friend, we are in deep trouble.
You can post all of the information you want on why there is not a God. I know what I know and what I have seen and heard. I get down on my knees everyday and thank Christ for the wisdom to see his works in my life.
I hate to break it to you but you aren't the only person on the planet who has witnessed death. I have witnessed more than my fair share, and I've never witnessed any of the alleged phenomena you claim. The long and short of it is that 10 anecdotes are no better than one, and 100 are no better than ten. All we have here is your first person revelation, and as such, no one is obligated to believe that your revelation is any more or less valid than mine or anyone else's. Anecdotes are not scientific, nor are they objective evidence.
By the way, just because someone's cancer goes into spontaneous remission doesn't mean that it did so at the beck and call of some supreme being. Cancers sometimes go into spontaneous remission, sometimes for reasons we understand, sometimes for reasons we currently don't. The god of the gaps is not a valid argument for the existence of the supernatural.
Given the nature of the statement, whether or not you trust the man is irrelevant. He's not asking you to purchase anything or trying to convince you to let him babysit your kids, just spouting philosophical opinions. Rather than saying his statements are true or false based on your knowledge of his sexual history, why not take an honest look at what he's saying and use your ability to reason to decide whether or not there's any validity to what he's proposed.
Good God, kids. Turn your logic on.
You yourself pointed out they're his 'philosophical opinions', so how would they be either true or false, they're opinions? And why would anyone take the opinion of a man that has an obvious agenda and give it validity? Not only an agenda, but perhaps the apparent reason behind the agenda has been exposed if he's a proponent of sexual behavior with children. In that case, his opinion is worthless and deserves no 'honest look'. I guess if I thought inappropriately touching children caused no harm then I would also like to believe that there is no moral code of any kind to hold me back, and vilify any moral standard that labeled me as deviant. How's that for 'reason' and 'logic'?
another false premise ..there is no evidence for god or against god .Well if one reads between the lines they might consider something more. I.E., miracles are presented, documented and offered up as proof. The skeptic does not render an opinion and moves on, pretty much forgetting such an event ever occurred. This leaves the believer the task of presenting some other event or proof, where once again it is not disprove, but ignored. Then we hear sometime later "there is no evidence for God."
The point is, once someone BELIEVES they've seen a miracle, they're a 'believer'. It doesn't take two.
Another point is that bona fide miracles do not require any belief at all. God is not limited to natural manifestations only. I personally find it quite sad to see the desperation in so many trying to explain away the obvious.
I never could figure out why atheists are always so hell bent on convincing other people there is no God?? ..
That is their religion, a belief in a Godless universe. They place their belief, or base their belief using a limited knowledge. And from this limited knowledge they are so egocentric as to think they can draw conclusions from an extremely limited knowledge of existence.
In short they may be long on a tentative science, but short on intelligence and honesty, in regards to the limitation of human knowledge. It really is the height of egocentricity.
Most atheists have tremendous egos, which is the source of their confusion. They don't realize exactly what the ego is. And this creates the delusion from which they then move from. It is best to just ignore them, and their extremely limited knowledge.
You may as well try to teach a chimp to speak English. Neither the atheist nor the chimp have the capacity to understand. The atheist still views the universe using classical physics. Scientific materialism. Yet materialism begins its life with one helluva assumption. That assumption is that consciousness comes from matter. When it is probably true that matter comes from consciousness. If this is ever proven, these atheists will probably have mental breakdowns, unable to live in a universe that came from consciousness, as their own egos would then be insignificant.
And so these atheists believe in something that is nothing more than an assumption. Only a big ego could ever do that. But these guys are a supersititious lot.
IT also appeared in an episode M*A*S*HHe was just making a joke, pacer. Some very enchanting and delightful speakers begin their case with a joke. "I swear to God I am an atheist," is such a statement. It was meant to be amusing.I'm confused. You say you are atheist and then you say you believe in God. Everyone perceives God differently for those who believe in God. So, that fact you believe in a God of your own perception/understanding would make you a believer, would it not?
He believes in God, doesn't wish to go into detail here to cause a stir or offend. It's just that he was trying to break a little ice. It wakes up the students in an auditorium and makes them wish to listen once they "get it."
Get it?
Thanks for explaining it. I got that phrase (I'm an atheists; I swear to God I am) from a comedian a long time back. I can't remember whether it was George Carlin or someone else, but I thought it was funny.
If God is a necessary condition of objective morality, where would mankind ascertain a means of objective morality, if God did not exist?
Dostoevsky once wrote: 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted'.
Faith is confidence or trust in a person, thing, deity, or in the doctrines or teachings of a religion or view (e.g. having strong political faith). It can also be belief that is not based on proof.[1] The word faith is often used as a substitute for hope, trust or belief.
In religion, faith often involves accepting claims about the character of a deity, nature, or the universe. While some have argued that faith is opposed to reason, proponents of faith argue that the proper domain of faith concerns questions which cannot be settled by evidence. ...
We are all born innocent children. Psychopathic behaviour is derived from some form of mental disorder.By 'mankind is inherently good' do you mean that each individual is inherently good? If so I disagree; psychopathic tendencies, along with other personality, are imo genetically determined. A psychopath is 'inherently' bad - or so it seems to me.
imo we should take it with a grain of salt.It does to the believer.
Can the rest of us not respect that? Should we?
Yes but that doesn't answer my questions, does it?
There is no answer, Brother. One Monkeys delusion is another Monkeys God Almighty.
A neutral government enforcing the right of each and every citizen to believe in whatever bullshit floats their boat is the closest thing to an answer we can expect in a society of hard-headed Monkeys wishing for individual freedom.
Are you suggesting that we don't have the clinical capability to define delusions? Because I can provide evidence that we do, in fact have that capability.
