From the latest edition of Viz, that hotbed of theological debate:
P.
P.
From the latest edition of Viz, that hotbed of theological debate:
P.
Please tone down your troll-like manner with me in this thread. It is making me feel like I am being asked to defend every post I am making. This is creating a hostile environment for me.
Also, pardon me for addressing this late but it's bothered me. I worked in the book industry for eleven years, I'm no stranger to the book trade, real books made out of paper. p). You wrote that Hitchens, "like Dawkins, has published hundreds of articles and dozens of books... some best sellers." Christopher Hitchens did indeed technically publish about two dozen books, because he put his name on anthologies, long essays published as books (a short history of Thomas Jefferson that historians laughed at, the short book of Clinton conspiracy theories, collections of his reviews of books he hadn't actually read), etc. These books were all so short and trivial that when his memoir appeared a year before his death, under the awful title Hitch 22, it was greeted as practially his first attempt at a major work. You also said that Richard Dawkins wrote "dozens" of books. He wrote eleven books, not even a dozen. What I'm wondering is if you've actually read any of them.
And so ends the debate with the heavy hitters.
What does that mean? I wonder what lyrics you will use to answer?
If you are saying we have no right to talk about your boss here, then why did you bring her up? Or is that not what you mean? I guess I'll have to wait for the lyrics.
I'm pretty sure CG is referring to God when she talks about her Boss.
That's all they talk about. If you tell an atheist you believe in God they think you're a Christian. If that happens to be the case would I also have to "justify" why someone would accept differing viewpoints? Or what? They get stoned in the public square? Whatever I believe about anything I'm entitled to that belief. It's only in imposing it on others that someone is in error. People have different reality tunnels. Yours is ultimately not verifiable. We know what our instruments tell us but how do we test our instruments. Science is a process and a way of thinking but there is no time when science will explain everything because everything we learn opens up new possibilities to learn even more.
I personally can't imagine how something that is dead (the universe) somehow generates life. It seems it wasn't dead. So was it always alive? Then it's immortal. Whatever condition it is that allowed life to occur seems miraculous to me. Is it just time? But then where does the "stuff" come from that everything is made of? I think that if you don't put anything in the oven it doesn't matter how long you cook it, Sunday Dinner is not going to happen.
Then to go beyond that, this stuff that we don't know where it came from sits around for billions of years and then decides to invent a single-celled organism. The single-celled organism wants to be a monkey and then decides to write Hamlet. To me that progression shows that there is potential that we might have a hard time understanding.
The problem is when anyone claims to know something about the nature of "God" and wants to sell it to you or use it as excuse to tell you how to live. Religion is dangerous but a belief in something greater than humanity is not in itself.
The problem is when anyone claims to know something about the nature of "God" and wants to sell it to you or use it as excuse to tell you how to live. Religion is dangerous but a belief in something greater than humanity is not in itself.
Thinkers, not bullies.
I'm a bully because I brought to light an aspect of Atheism you're not comfortable (or equipped enough) debating? I sense a trend. Atheism is a form of control. "There is no omniscient being that has control over me" is the battlecry of the non-believer, which is fine, to each their own. But it;s quite laughable that in a thread designed to discuss Atheism, the topics for discussion must be limited to a narrow scope of "God is bad. WAH!" and not war. Not Atheist credibility. Not closed-mindedness. Not public policy. Not modern application of Atheist principles to the general good of the people. Nope, Atheism Thread is for discussing how intellectual Atheists are. How dare I bust your filter bubble, "SHE'S A BULLY!"
Atheism is not a form of control. Atheism is defined as non-belief in a god(s).
A=not. Theism=belief in a god(s). Therefore, atheism=not-belief in god(s). You are a fan of Chomsky the linguist. You should understand the structure of words, no? Or have you not read any of his books? Another hoisting, I gather.
A recent edition of Horizon (UK TV show) had genetic modification as a subject, specifically all the things science could do but the bible bashing halfwits in various seats of power won't allow. One of the most striking things was the company in America who could alter genetically the properties of a certain yeast so instead of alcohol, the by product of brewing would be a cellulose that could be readily turned into petrol. They can literally brew up petrol like they do vodka, but because it meant Genetically altering a living organism, yeast they couldn't get the process licensed to do it industrially, because congress cant get any laws passed which would allow science to alter genetics, because baby Jesus's daddy didn't make it like that in the first place.