Topic: Why do Atheists Hate Religion? - page 392. (Read 901367 times)

What you advocating is, reality is an illusion. I don't buy that.

I agree that we have some slight control... maybe even way more than I think. Here is the gist of what I am saying.

We have no observable knowledge of the way we have control. In all science and observation, and even logic, we don't see any control of choice.

Do you want to say that you have control of some aspects of your choices? You do. But everything that we see in nature and science, EVERYTHING, says and shows that we don't have any control. We only have the illusion of control. Freedom is only an illusion.

BD, yes so some factors are within our control and others not, that is what life teaches us; The humility to try change the things we can and accept those that we cant. But the universe gives everyone the space to do this without fear or favor. You dont have the fear it to do so. When we die nobody knows what comes next its all speculation. So accept the reality you are in.

And

Yes, if you prefer to think when you die its game over, that is YOUR perogative
 
and

Yes, if you prefer to think that when you die you are reconstituted and expressed in some other way by all means do so. All choices are our individual right, each must make up their own minds. The same way we choose with whom it is we fall in love with or what it is we like to eat....etc. Live and let live....Yada Yada YoYo

The only thing we need saving from is one anothers obsessions 

I don't exactly disagree with you.

In science and observation of workings of everything that we see in the universe, we observe nothing other than cause and effect, action and reaction.

Your getting up or staying in bed is dictated by things like the many neuron firings in your brain which cause you to make the decision the way you do. The neuron firings are determined to some extent by the electrolytes in your system. The electrolytes are determined by what you ate or drank the night before. The things you ate or drank were determined both by availability and by the electrolyte-neuron-induced-firing of the night before. The food composition of the food you ate and the drink you drank were determined by many factors in nature and manufacturing, all of which were determined by many other factors.

This listing is, obviously, by no means complete. Nor is it the exact way things work. There are way too many factors that control the way we think, or that move us into making decisions, to be known or listed. However, whatever the factors are, in number or quality, they are the things that move us into making every decision that we make.

The fact that we get up in the morning at the same time or in the same manner every day, is all part of the programming that has been placed into the universe, each little cause and effect, action and reaction, combining into the production of the things that we see and do.

Suppose that it takes 100 workers to build a specific skyscraper. If we lost a worker or two, the slack would be taken up by others, or replacements would be found. If we had a couple too many workers, the jobs of some might become easier, or the extras would be pulled off the job. The building would wind up being built, the end result being just the same as it would have been with more or with fewer workers. But the way it would be built would be slightly different with more or fewer workers. If there were too few workers, the building might not be built in a timely manner, the contractor might lose his contract and get sued, and maybe the building wouldn't get built at all.

The workers in the building called "your choices" are the electrons that make up the neuron firing in your brain. If there are more, you might get up with more enthusiasm. If there are too few, you might not get up at all. The reasons for the existence of more or fewer are based on many things, which act the way they do based on other things, which act the way they do based on other things. There is no visible freedom of choice. All is programmed, going back to the Beginning.

The only certainty is change. Time is the forge and filter of wisdom. Reality is objective; it’s our perspective of it that is subjective and unique.

Example:

Seek the truth for it shall set you free, truth is stranger than fiction and reality is riddled with irony. Terence Mckenna’s timewave theory is vindicated by the blockchain, it is the tipping point in human history. "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.' - George Orwell. This will be the blockchain, it will record history going forward and in so doing it will free society from its "chains". The genesis block was the birth of collective consciousness; satoshi nakamoto is the supernatural creator ;-)

Exhibit A:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.11715833

That is not true, cause and effect does not remove freedom of choice. The fact that the sun rises and sets does not preclude you from getting up or staying in bed. Cause and effect influences choice it does not dictate it.

Come on, now. Do you really think that a SuperGod hasn't left Himself ways to jiggle and juggle the programming of the toy universe He built for Himself, just like we might modify part of the programming in a running computer program?

Wake up! Smart as we are, we are nothing when compared with/to the SuperGod.

Look. Since everything is pre-programmed, and since some people preach about God, isn't it fully evident from that alone, that God exists and is reaching out to unbelievers through the people who know Him? After all, He programmed their faith into them, even if it seems like he programmed unbelief into others.

In the Revelation in the New Testament in the Bible, it talks about the heavens rolling up like a scroll, at the destruction time of the universe. A guy has to have excitement in the book he is reading. Even if it is God getting excitement from the book of the universe He created (wrote/spoke).

 

I sure hope not. Science has produced some wonderful things. Why should we lose it that way?

 

Pull your head out of the sand.

Before this century is out, intellectual abuse [national or religious indoctrination during formative years] will be both legal crimes and deep-rooted cultural taboos. That shit ain't gonna fly in the Civilization of Reason that is coming.

What if?

In the face of universal complexity as we see it, and all-pervading entropy, and the fact that everything as we know it is pre-programed, we still have people who can't even come to the simple conclusion that God exists. It's obvious that children are being, and are going to be, raised in any and every way possible.

Neat question. But rather useless.

The right way to raise our children is to tell them the truth. The truth is found in my three above posts, even though it is not my truth. It all-pervading truth.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.11864476

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.11869191

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.11869484

Then, find the ways God is showing Himself to us, and dogma or not, raise our children with God understanding.

Who ever told you that nonsense? Listen my child, the bruised ego I leave you with is the Toll you gotta pay to tap this Font of Wisdom, understand? A bruised ego is a cheap price for what I'm offering, and you should pay it gladly.

TLDR Suck it up princess.

Yours in Jerkery and Levity,

World Asshole Beliathon

I know it was satire.  I was giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you were actually making a thoughtful contribution underneath it.  I also continue to assume you and I have something in common in that we appreciate the merit of sound ideas. You're calling that assumption into question.  As you continue to demonstrate, being an atheist apparently doesn't mean you won't be a complete jerk, let alone give proper respect to someone who takes the time to give you said benefit of the doubt and make a thoughtful response to engage you in meaningful conversation simply because you have a different opinion.  Case in point, you've made at least three foot-in-mouth posts to me in this thread wherein you were sharply corrected with respectable academic references (i.e. by your more educated peers), and it's become clear that you aren't as open to sound ideas, or academic progress (or, you know...the dictionary) as you purport.  It doesn't suit your best interest to be continually arrogant when you're running out of feet (or have a small mouth).

You have forgotten the rest of the quote... the part about how universal cause and effect show us that everything is pre-programmed. Since everything is programmed, we have no freedom of choice.

Besides cause and effect, one of the other great and penetrating things we see in the universe is entropy. Everything we see is wearing our, running down, deteriorating, equalizing. There is nothing that we see that shows us how things could come about in the first place. Big Bang is a myth. It is a non-God God.

If there was no man, if there were no human beings, if all that existed was some organic rock, some elemental hydrogen wafting its way across the intergalactic space lanes, then we might have a hard time suggesting with any kind of certainty that God exists.

But this isn't the case. Mankind and the universe are both highly complex, beyond understanding. Yet in the face of entropy, we don't have a factual clue that shows us how such complexity could exist. Furthermore, the complexity is beyond that which we already know, and we realize that it is. How can we tell? Because doctors and researchers haven't been able to cause a person to be able to live a simple 200 years yet, but they keep on trying.

When you combine entropy-without-a-recognizable-beginning-source, with cause-and-effect-programming, you come up with the fact that there was/is something out there that not only caused the programmed universe, but also something like super intelligence that "He" could program such complexity to happen at this end of the existence of all that exists. Why do I say "He." Because mankind is programmed with intelligence and reasoning, the Creator must have had way more ability to reason. (I should really have called Him SuperGod.)

In other words, if we were only into one year since "He" started the whole thing, the few billions upon billions of cause and effect happenings would have been tiny compared with the untold trillions upon trillions - actually innumerable - of cause and effect happenings that have maintained intelligence among human beings over thousands of years, and all that in the face of the deterioration caused by entropy.

Call "Him" whatever you want to call "Him." The term "God" as we understand it is way too meaningless to define the tremendously great reality regarding what the SUPER-INTELLIGENCE that created the universe is.

Religion is about what people believe and do. It doesn't have anything to do with changing the essence of what the human being really is. Because of this, the idea of departure from religion is a misnomer The departure isn't from religion. It is from formal religion. Or it is from known and accepted religion.

What is the departure from known and formal religion to? It is to a different religion. It often is to a religion that doesn't formally accept God, or one that suggests that there is no religion - a religion of no religion. Much of the time it is to a religion of humanism, where mankind thinks that he is God, even though he doesn't say it in those words. For many it is simply a departure from morals to wild and loose living.

The one thing departure from religion is not is, the departure from religion. People who think such either are not stating what they think is really happening, or they are lying, even if it is only to themselves.

The nature of mankind is such that man always seeks religion... always seeks God to some extent. A big part of the reason for this is that man does not know for a fact anything even an instant into the future.

Consider the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were in their next movement in life. Some were walking down the sidewalk, perhaps heading for the bomb shelters as the air-raid sirens were blaring. They knew, as they were taking their next step, almost exactly where their foot would land. And then they were gone.

We simply do not really know. Because life and the earth are reasonably stable, our experience deceives us into thinking that we know a short way into the future. But we don't know. Our inner soul cries out for help from God. Our personal religion seeks to stabilize that part of our life that is unknown. There is no non-religion. There is only different religion.

It's called satire, dipshit. See, it's funny because theists have been committing unspeakable crimes against atheists (+generic heretics and sinners) for centuries, including many forms of torture and even burning alive at the stake. Atheists don't torture, enslave, or kill religious folks.

Jesus Christ, you people... Why do I even bother?

How is the general result any different from someone freely and non-dogmatically coming to the conclusion that their children should also be raised freely and non-dogmatically, as you would advocate?  (The point is that your disposition is generally no different, wherein you deem your own thinking about this matter to be 'more correct' based only upon your free-thinking opinion, just as any free-thinking "theistard" does.)

Basically, welcome to the club of opinions.  You and the free-thinking "theistards" have something in common, after all.