The U.S. NOT founded upon Christianity

[bodecea]

no, our law is made to protect people of faith. To allow them to worship as they please.

people without faith have never been persecuted. it's always been those who insist on adhering to a religion other than the state religion.

bs

 

[JBeukema]

You are going about this backwards.

Religion is faith based.

Atheism is faith based, because it cannot develop an empirical model to debunk religious faith.

The best you can come up with is an agnostic model.

You need to get your emotion out of the way.

Once again, you fail. Noone has to bother debunking your religion. You make a claim x exists, you bear the burden on proof.

I refer you once again to the teapot.

Non-belief cannot be faith-based because it makes no assertions, it's not a claim, it is, by definition, a non-belief, a non-statement, a non-claim.

The best you can come up with is an agnostic model.

You fail again.


Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. They often are found together, as they address to very different questions. Go follow the links, do your vocabulary homework and come back when you know what you're talking about.


But you won't, because the fact challenge your faith, including the belief you've you've been programmed to hold that leads you to label anything as 'faith' so you can assert, despite the facts, that reality is equal to your delusion. To challenge that brainwashing is a fight for your soul, which you've placed alongside your reason and intellect upon the alter of your religion. Facts don't matter to you anymore and you will not only deny them, but become even further entrenched in your willful ignorance, You're not the first. Arthur Koestler [ame="http://www.amazon.com/God-That-Failed-Arthur-Koestler/dp/0231123957?tag=amaz98-20"]describes his going through the same thing you are now[/ame] when he placed his own reason and intellect upon the alter of faith in the name of grand promise, intellectual laziness, and bliss.

 

[JakeStarkey]

no, our law is made to protect people of faith. To allow them to worship as they please.

people without faith have never been persecuted. it's always been those who insist on adhering to a religion other than the state religion.

bs

Tell AllieBaba that is absolutely nonsense.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Your philosophical argument for atheism is based on a non-starter. You can't prove that God does not exist, yet you claim that God does not exist. That is faith, JB, and I will leave you to the last word.

 

[Intense]

No, it means JB that you are not as sharp as you think that you are.

That's OK.

I am comfortable with investigation, and I certainly know when I read nonsense, which you put out from time to time.

Other matters, where you are rational, you are fun to read, and I agree with you often.

Are all Federal Pay Checks nonsense, or just yours???

 

[JakeStarkey]

No, it means JB that you are not as sharp as you think that you are.

That's OK.

I am comfortable with investigation, and I certainly know when I read nonsense, which you put out from time to time.

Other matters, where you are rational, you are fun to read, and I agree with you often.

Are all Federal Pay Checks nonsense, or just yours???

Intense, daveman is the only person here on a federal pay check that I know of. Several of us have military and disability checks that we earned protecting your freedoms. I have been engaged in private business for twenty years, and pay my own way without problem.

How about you?

 

[Intense]

You assert that non-belief is a matter of faith. You are wrong by definition. Follow the links.


Your vocabulary lesson for today:
theism
atheism
gnosticism
agnosticism
strong atheism
weak atheism
gnostic atheism
agnostic atheism
gnostic theism
agnostic theism

Come back when you know what you're talking about

Here's for some sober reading. Follow the links for further study.

Types of theism
But passing from views that are formally anti-theistic, it is found that among Theists themselves certain differences exist which tend to complicate the problem, and increase the difficulty of stating it briefly and clearly. Some of these differences are brief and clear.

Some of these differences are merely formal and accidental and do not affect the substance of the theistic thesis, but others are of substantial importance, as, for instance, whether we can validly establish the truth of God's existence by the same kind of rational inference (e.g. from effect to cause) as we employ in other departments of knowledge, or whether, in order to justify our belief in this truth, we must not rather rely on some transcendental principle or axiom, superior and antecedent to dialectical reasoning; or on immediate intuition; or on some moral, sentimental, emotional, or æsthetic instinct or perception, which is voluntary rather than intellectual.

Kant denied in the name of "pure reason" the inferential validity of the classical theistic proofs, while in the name of "practical reason" he postulated God's existence as an implicate of the moral law, and Kant's method has been followed or imitated by many Theists — by some who fully agree with him in rejecting the classical arguments; by others, who, without going so far, believe in the apologetical expediency of trying to persuade rather than convince men to be Theists. A moderate reaction against the too rigidly mathematical intellectualism of Descartes was to be welcomed, but the Kantian reaction by its excesses has injured the cause of Theism and helped forward the cause of anti-theistic philosophy. Herbert Spencer, as is well known, borrowed most of his arguments for Agnosticism from Hamilton and Mansel, who had popularized Kantian criticism in England, while in trying to improve on Kant's reconstructive transcendentalism, his German disciples (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) drifted into Pantheism. Kant also helped to prepare the way for the total disparagement of human reason in relation to religious truth, which constitutes the negative side of Traditionalism, while the appeal of that system on the positive side to the common consent and tradition of mankind as the chief or sole criterion of truth and more especially of religious truth — its authority as a criterion being traced ultimately to a positive Divine revelation — is, like Kant's refuge in practical reason, merely an illogical attempt to escape from Agnosticism.
Again, though Ontologism — like that of Malebranche (d. 1715) — is older than Kant, its revival in the nineteenth century (by Gioberti, Rosmini, and others) has been inspired to some extent by Kantian influences. This system maintains that we have naturally some immediate consciousness, however dim at first, or some intuitive knowledge of God — not indeed that we see Him in His essence face to face but that we know Him in His relation to creatures by the same act of cognition — according to Rosmini, as we become conscious of being in general — and therefore that the truth of His existence is as much a datum of philosophy as is the abstract idea of being.

Finally, the philosophy of Modernism — about which there has recently been such a stir — is a somewhat complex medley of these various systems and tendencies; its main features as a system are:

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Existence of God



(a privative, and theos, God, i.e. without God).

Atheism is that system of thought which is formally opposed to theism. Since its first coming into use the term atheism has been very vaguely employed, generally as an epithet of accusation against any system that called in question the popular gods of the day. Thus while Socrates was accused of atheism (Plato, Apol., 26, c.) and Diagoras called an atheist by Cicero (Nat. Deor., I, 23), Democritus and Epicurus were styled in the same sense impious (without respect for the gods) on account of their trend of their new atomistic philosophy. In this sense too, the early Christians were known to the pagans as atheists, because they denied the heathen gods; while, from time to time, various religious and philisophical systems have, for similar reasons, been deemed atheistic.

Though atheism, historically considered, has meant no more in the past than a critical or sceptical denial of the theology of those who have employed the term as one of reproach, and has consquently no one strict philisophical meaning; and though there is no one consistent system in the exposition of which it has a definite place; yet, if we consider it in its broad meaning as merely the opposite of theism, we will be able to frame such divisions as will make possible a grouping of definite systems under this head. And in so doing so we shall at once be adopting both the historical and the philosophical view. For the common basis of all systems of theism as well as the cardinal tenet of all popular religion at the present day is indubitably a belief in the existence of a personal God, and to deny this tenet is to invite the popular reproach of atheism. The need of some such definition as this was felt by Mr. Gladstone when he wrote (Contemporary Review, June 1876):

By the Atheist I understand the man who not only holds off, like the sceptic, from the affirmative, but who drives himself, or is driven, to the negative assertion in regard to the whole unseen, or to the existence of God.
Moreover, the breadth of comprehension in such a use of the term admits of divisions and cross-divisions being framed under it; and at the same time limits the number of systems of thought to which, with any propriety, it might otherwise be extended. Also, if the term is thus taken, in strict contradistinction to theism, and a plan of its possible modes of acceptance made, these systems of thought will naturally appear in clearer proportion and relationship.

Thus, defined as a doctrine, or theory, or philosophy formally opposed to theism, atheism can only signify the teaching of those schools, whether cosmological or moral, which do not include God either as a principle or as a conclusion of their reasoning.

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Atheism



Gnosticism
The doctrine of salvation by knowledge. This definition, based on the etymology of the word (gnosis "knowledge", gnostikos, "good at knowing"), is correct as far as it goes, but it gives only one, though perhaps the predominant, characteristic of Gnostic systems of thought. Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were "people who knew", and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know. A more complete and historical definition of Gnosticism would be:

A collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic-idealistic sects, which flourished from some time before the Christian Era down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the whole universe a depravation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness of matter and the return to the Parent-Spirit, which return they held to be inaugurated and facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Saviour.

However unsatisfactory this definition may be, the obscurity, multiplicity, and wild confusion of Gnostic systems will hardly allow of another. Many scholars, moreover, would hold that every attempt to give a generic description of Gnostic sects is labour lost.

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Gnosticism



(1) The word Agnostic (Greek a, privative + gnostikós "knowing") was coined by Professor Huxley in 1869 to describe the mental attitude of one who regarded as futile all attempts to know the reality corresponding to our ultimate scientific, philosophic, and religious ideas. As first employed by Huxley, the new term suggested the contrast between his own unpretentious ignorance and the vain knowledge which the Gnostics of the second and third century claimed to possess. This antithesis served to discredit the conclusions of natural theology, or theistic reasoning, by classing them with the idle vapourings of Gnosticism. The classification was unfair, the attempted antithesis overdrawn. It is rather the Gnostic and the Agnostic who are the real extremists; the former extending the bounds of knowledge, and the latter narrowing them, unduly. Natural theology, or theism, occupies the middle ground between these extremes, and should have been disassociated both from the Gnostic position, that the mind can know everything, and from the Agnostic position, that it can know nothing concerning the truths of religion. (See GNOSTICISM.)

(2) Agnosticism, as a general term in philosophy, is frequently employed to express any conscious attitude of doubt, denial, or disbelief, towards some, or even all, of man's powers of knowing or objects of knowledge. The meaning of the term may accordingly vary, like that of the other word "Scepticism", which it has largely replaced, from partial to complete Agnosticism; it may be our knowledge of the world, of the self, or of God, that is questioned; or it may be the knowableness of all three, and the validity of any knowledge, whether of sense or intellect, science or philosophy, history, ethics, religion. The variable element in the term is the group of objects, or propositions, to which it refers; the invariable element, the attitude of learned ignorance it always implies towards the possibility of acquiring knowledge.

(3) Agnosticism, as a term of modern philosophy, is used to describe those theories of the limitations of human knowledge which deny the constitutional ability of the mind to know reality and conclude with the recognition of an intrinsically Unknowable. The existence of "absolute reality" is usually affirmed while, at the same time, its knowableness is denied. Kant, Hamilton, Mansel, and Spencer make this affirmation an integral part of their philosophic systems. The Phenomenalists, however, deny the assertion outright, while the Positivists, Comte and Mill, suspend judgment concerning the existence of "something beyond phenomena". (See POSITIVISM.)

(4) Modern Agnosticism differs from its ancient prototype. Its genesis is not due to a reactionary spirit of protest, and a collection of sceptical arguments, against "dogmatic systems" of philosophy in vogue, so much as to an adverse criticism of man's knowing-powers in answer to the fundamental question: What can we know? Kant, who was the first to raise this question, in his memorable reply to Hume, answered it by a distinction between "knowable phenomena" and "unknowable things-in-themselves". Hamilton soon followed with his doctrine that "we know only the relations of things". Modern Agnosticism is thus closely associated with Kant's distinction and Hamilton's principle of relativity. It asserts our inability to know the reality corresponding to our ultimate scientific, philosophic, or religious ideas.

(5) Agnosticism, with special reference to theology, is a name for any theory which denies that it is possible for man to acquire knowledge of God. It may assume either a religious or an anti-religious form, according as it is confined to a criticism of rational knowledge or extended to a criticism of belief. De Bonald (1754-1840), in his theory that language is of divine origin, containing, preserving, and transmitting the primitive revelation of Good to man; De Lammenais (1782-1854), in his theory that individual reason is powerless, and social reason alone competent; Bonetty (1798-1879), in his advocacy of faith in God, the Scriptures, and the Church, afford instances of Catholic theologians attempting to combine belief in moral and religious truths with the denial that valid knowledge of the same is attainable by reason apart from revelation and tradition. To these systems of Fideism and Traditionalism should be added the theory of Mansel (1820-71), which Spencer regarded as a confession of Agnosticism, that the very inability of reason to know the being and attributes of God proves that revelation is necessary to supplement the mind's shortcomings. This attitude of criticising knowledge, but not faith, was also a feature of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy. (See FIDEISM and TRADITIONALISM.)
(6) The extreme view that knowledge of God is impossible, even with the aid of revelation, is the latest form of religious Agnosticism. The new theory regards religion and science as two distinct and separate accounts of experience, and seeks to combine an agnostic intellect with a believing heart. It has been aptly called "mental book-keeping by double entry". Ritschl, reviving Kant's separatist distinction of theoretical from practical reason, proclaims that the idea of God contains not so much as a grain of reasoned knowledge; it is merely "an attractive ideal", having moral and religious, but no objective, scientific, value for the believer who accepts it. Harnack locates the essence of Christianity in a filial relation felt towards an unknowable God the Father. Sabatier considers the words God, Father, as symbols which register the feelings of the human heart towards the Great Unknowable of the intellect.

(7) Recent Agnosticism is also to a great extent anti-religious, criticizing adversely not only the knowledge we have of God, but the grounds of belief in Him as well. A combination of Agnosticism with Atheism, rather than with sentimental irrational belief, is the course adopted by many. The idea of God is eliminated both from the systematic and personal view which is taken of the world and of life. The attitude of "solemnly suspended judgment" shades off first into indifference towards religion, as an inscrutable affair at best, and next into disbelief. The Agnostic does not always merely abstain from either affirming or denying the existence of God, but crosses over to the old position of theoretic Atheism and, on the plea of insufficient evidence, ceases even to believe that God exists. While, therefore, not to be identified with Atheism, Agnosticism is often found in combination with it. (See ATHEISM.)

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Agnosticism

 

[Intense]

No, it means JB that you are not as sharp as you think that you are.

That's OK.

I am comfortable with investigation, and I certainly know when I read nonsense, which you put out from time to time.

Other matters, where you are rational, you are fun to read, and I agree with you often.

Are all Federal Pay Checks nonsense, or just yours???

Intense, daveman is the only person here on a federal pay check that I know of. Several of us have military and disability checks that we earned protecting your freedoms. I have been engaged in private business for twenty years, and pay my own way without problem.

How about you?

And I though you drew a Federal Pay Check. You could have mentioned that a few thousand posts sooner Jake. I'm Independent. Pay my own way too. What is with the progressive stance Jake, thats counter productive? Can't protect and deny liberty at the same time, at least not without a plan. Some bad laws coming down Jake. Take cover, count your fingers and your toes, hope they are still intact when this comes down.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Everyone has known for a year that I was in the army. There is not problem with it at all. If you are suggesting there is, then stop paying taxes and protect yourself.

 

[Intense]

Everyone has known for a year that I was in the army. There is not problem with it at all. If you are suggesting there is, then stop paying taxes and protect yourself.

You are projecting Jake. I have no problem with the Service at all.

We are a Federalist Republic. Someone should remind The White House about that.

I thought you were a Government Bureaucrat Jake. That's something to laugh about actually.

 

[JakeStarkey]

You have the obvious mentality for a civil servant, Intense, but I wish you well at whatever you are doing.

 

[Intense]

You have the obvious mentality for a civil servant, Intense, but I wish you well at whatever you are doing.

LOL!!! I don't exactly fit the profile Jake. Thanks for the thought though. What's with the Avatar avatar Jake. Pretty disappointing movie. Anti everything. Watch it too much and your brain might just coagulate into something nasty.

 

[AllieBaba]

You have the obvious mentality for a civil servant, Intense, but I wish you well at whatever you are doing.

Is that bad???

It can't be as bad as having the soul of an accountant..

 

[AllieBaba]

You have the obvious mentality for a civil servant, Intense, but I wish you well at whatever you are doing.

LOL!!! I don't exactly fit the profile Jake. Thanks for the thought though. What's with the Avatar avatar Jake. Pretty disappointing movie. Anti everything. Watch it too much and your brain might just coagulate into something nasty.

How did you manage to get through Avatar without falling asleep? I had it for a week or so and tried, repeatedly, to make it through and never did. Not once. I think this might be a movie that is actually improved by the butchery for time constraints that takes place when it hits cable.

 

[Gadawg73]

The founding fathers if America were a deeply repligious people. The separation that they fought for was that the government would NOT be able to interfere with our religious freesoms. I don't think that can be denied with any intelligence.

From where this great nation began, to where she is today is a shameful disgrace to the founding fathers.

In the current state of affairs of this nation, God certainly is not being allowed to have any part, if the government has it's way. That is the opposite of what the founders intended. Look at the monuments, and rich religious history of the nation just once with an open mind. You will see that all religions were acknowledged, but the Christian faith is engraved deeply in these monuments, and our history.

Today God is being dishonored by our government. Our founders prayed whil doing government tasks and writing laws. Our founders made God a part of what they were doing, and depended upon Him to guide them (for the most part).

The founders never wanted a theocracy, and I know of no Christians who are seeking to establich one, at lease no Christians who have the support of mainstream Christianity. A few radicals maybe. There are a few radicals who want the Muslims to be the power in America, among them is our so called president.

Yes, God was with us as this nation was being birthed. God has blessed this nation for 200 years. Now He doesn't belong, and I believe His mighty hand of protection has been lifted. We Christians need to get back toi the task at hand. That is to seek the face of God, repent and turn from our wicked ways, and allow God to move in us in His mighty power to restore America to the status of the blessed.

Hog wash.
Your one paragraph is correct as I also believe that we Christians do not want a theocracy.
Where do you live? There are more churches around here than fast food restaurants.
Talk to God about the deficit, terrorism and education. Ask him to fix all three and get back to me.
God has no place in government. If so, who's God?

NOBODY HAS SAID WE WANT OR ARE A THEOCRACY

Dumbshit. This sort of persistent idiocy is why the same things get said over and over.

4th and long and Allie fumbles the snap and a D lineman picks it up and runs it in for a TD.
What is the # of that defensive lineman? Is that a 73?

 

[Sky Dancer]

Hog wash.
Your one paragraph is correct as I also believe that we Christians do not want a theocracy.
Where do you live? There are more churches around here than fast food restaurants.
Talk to God about the deficit, terrorism and education. Ask him to fix all three and get back to me.
God has no place in government. If so, who's God?

NOBODY HAS SAID WE WANT OR ARE A THEOCRACY

Dumbshit. This sort of persistent idiocy is why the same things get said over and over.

4th and long and Allie fumbles the snap and a D lineman picks it up and runs it in for a TD.
What is the # of that defensive lineman? Is that a 73?

And a tackle.

 

[JBeukema]

Your philosophical argument for atheism is based on a non-starter. You can't prove that God does not exist, yet you claim that God does not exist. That is faith, JB, and I will leave you to the last word.

Fail. I never stated god does not exist. That is a positive statement. Only you have made a positive statement- you've asserted that x exists, hence you bear the burden of proof, just as he who asserts there is an elephant in the room bears the burden of proof to point out the elephant and demonstrate its existence.

That you insist on misrepresenting my views and attributing to me things I never said proves that your fear of having your faith challenged prevents you from being honest.

 

[JBeukema]

Kant denied in the name of "pure reason" the inferential validity of the classical theistic proofs, while in the name of "practical reason" he postulated God's existence as an implicate of the moral law

1) What is 'moral law'

2) morality is subjective

3) the moral instinct is easily explained without appeals to the metaphyscal and supernatural

Atheism is that system of thought which is formally opposed to theism.

Fail.

Atheism is, by definition, non-belief in deity. a-without + theos-god


Not surprising that a Roman Universal Church of Pederasty 'encyclopedia' would present such fallacious representations of others.

By the Atheist I understand the man who not only holds off, like the sceptic, from the affirmative, but who drives himself, or is driven, to the negative assertion in regard to the whole unseen, or to the existence of God.

Then you understand bullshit and false definition. Atheism is non-belief in deity. It means nothing more unless further specified. Go do the above vocabulary homework and come back when you're prepared to be honest

Gnosticism
The doctrine of salvation by knowledge.

Fail.


Gnositism =/= gnosticism

The first refers to a number of xtian heresies. The latter simply means one claims to have (absolute) knowledge (as opposed to agnosticism a-without + gnostos-knowledge)

Again, go do the above vocabulary homework and then come back when you have a clue.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Your philosophical argument for atheism is based on a non-starter. You can't prove that God does not exist, yet you claim that God does not exist. That is faith, JB, and I will leave you to the last word.

Fail. I never stated god does not exist. That is a positive statement. Only you have made a positive statement- you've asserted that x exists, hence you bear the burden of proof, just as he who asserts there is an elephant in the room bears the burden of proof to point out the elephant and demonstrate its existence.

That you insist on misrepresenting my views and attributing to me things I never said proves that your fear of having your faith chaalleng3ed prevents you from being honest.

Where did you pick up your philosophical training, JB? You have misrepresented me and my views. You fail at this, and really you should consider that those of us who are informed about these matters just grin when we read your remarks.

I will leave you to it this time. Have a great day.

 

[Intense]

Kant denied in the name of "pure reason" the inferential validity of the classical theistic proofs, while in the name of "practical reason" he postulated God's existence as an implicate of the moral law

1) What is 'moral law'

2) morality is subjective

3) the moral instinct is easily explained without appeals to the metaphyscal and supernatural

Atheism is that system of thought which is formally opposed to theism.

Fail.

Atheism is, by definition, non-belief in deity. a-without + theos-god


Not surprising that a Roman Universal Church of Pederasty 'encyclopedia' would present such fallacious representations of others.

By the Atheist I understand the man who not only holds off, like the sceptic, from the affirmative, but who drives himself, or is driven, to the negative assertion in regard to the whole unseen, or to the existence of God.

Then you understand bullshit and false definition. Atheism is non-belief in deity. It means nothing more unless further specified. Go do the above vocabulary homework and come back when you're prepared to be honest

Gnosticism
The doctrine of salvation by knowledge.

Fail.


Gnositism =/= gnosticism

The first refers to a number of xtian heresies. The latter simply means one claims to have (absolute) knowledge (as opposed to agnosticism a-without + gnostos-knowledge)

Again, go do the above vocabulary homework and then come back when you have a clue.

You are arguing with an Encyclopedia.



You need to spend more time on the New Advent website.

Watch out or the Catholics are going to get you!!! What ever you do stay away from the Catholic girls, you are no match. Then again ... if you like being a submissive and losing every battle of will, go for it.