My wife, Danielle Powell, was kicked out of Grace University because she is gay. As if that’s not bad enough, now the school is forcing her to pay back her scholarship money, because they say she wasn’t “moral” enough to deserve that scholarship.
There’s your Christianity right there, America.
This is really fresh, encouraging, and challenging; a reflective echo of the cries of my own heart that gives new perspective on an old topic.
Fuck this ad hom bullshit. This whole story, which was written by a biased thoughtless numbskull, seeks to frame atheism as an individual’s problem with some church or set of religious ceremonies. The subtext, of course, is that they’re atheists because they want to be atheists. Like it’s cool to be part of the “new atheism” movement (if you can even stomach that fucking term.) That if only church were more engaging these kids would reveal that truly, in their heart of hearts, they believe in some god. He even subheads a section: “The Decision to embrace unbelief was often an emotional one.”
What a steaming load of pandering, dismissive, thought-terminating, condescending bullshit.
First of all, it’s not a decision to believe or not believe something. If that were the case, of course, you could decide to believe you were telepathic and you could have communicated this story to the whole planet without having to publish it (saving us all a lot of grief). You could have chosen to believe you can fly. Yet, you published this harmful bullshit where everyone could see it because you don’t believe you can communicate telepathically and you don’t walk off the Empire State Building because you don’t just believe you can fly. Not believing in your ability to fly isn’t the result of some low self-esteem or traumatic childhood, it’s based on what you know about the natural world. Not believing in gods isn’t based on being bored at church and your fucking single, pathetic anecdote doesn’t help your argument. Not believing in gods is based on the same observation and knowledge of the natural world.
Asking why does G-d not need a cause is like asking why a liar never tells the truth.
…because in either case the answer will be a lie?
Because of the definition of G-d as with the definition of a liar, it would be a logical contradiction to say G-d has a cause.
So, you’ve defined your concept of god into existence. That’s easy to do, but it doesn’t have any impact on the truth value of the claim. You can keep telling us about your concept of god and why it must exist and then provide excuse after excuse for why there’s no evidence, but we’re just going to keep asking your to point to evidence. This is an appropriate place to refer the allegory of the Leprechaun in a box (performed here by Jeff Dee and Matt Dillahunty.
So the criticism of the cosmological argument that it doesn’t explain the cause of G-d is not valid.
Actually, it’s plenty valid. You don’t know what logical validity is. You can’t just change the premise upon which your argument is built in order to force the conclusion to be sound because you end up begging the question. In other words, you can’t just say “well, whatever god I’m talking about has no cause,” without answering the obvious question, “how do you know that?” Now you’re stuck answering the question of A) how you know that your god exists B) How you know it has no cause and, the original question, C) why it needs no cause when, presumably, other things do.
Jury says Catholic archdiocese discriminated against Christa Dias by firing her after she became pregnant via artificial insemination
Dias, who is not Catholic, testified she didn’t know artificial insemination violated church doctrine or the employment pact. She said she thought the contract clause about abiding by church teachings meant she should be a Christian and follow the Bible.
Dias also has claimed that the church policies are not enforced equally against men and women.
Goodin argued that Dias, who is gay, never intended to abide by her contract. She kept her sexual orientation a secret because she knew that homosexual acts also would violate that contract, he said.
Whenever I hear stories about people seeing holy trinities in frozen waterfalls or imaging there must be a god because some brain cell images look like some star images (in that they’re made up of lines and dots) I think about how easy it would be to wedge and image into being representative of something else and then attaching meaning to it. This Hemoglobin/Flying Spaghetti Monster is great because it really accomplishes the mission of the FSM. It fills the exact same role as Jesus or any other god character, and is justified using the same illogical nonsense.
Well, I sure hope you live your life as if there is the right god. What if you decide to live your life as if the Christian god is real, when, in fact, it’s an ancient Norse god and he’s pissed off you worshiped wrong. Or what if you lived your life as if the Islamic concept of god is real when, in fact, the real god is more closely linked ancient Mayan mythology?
Pascal’s Wager is a false choice
The thought process you’re engaging in here is a fallacy called Pascal’s Wager and, frankly, it’s ridiculous. It sets up this situation where you waste time and energy and, almost certainly, money on a view of god you’ve decided to embrace to somehow outsmart a false dichotomy. The only options are not the god concept you’ve embraced or no god. Humanity has come up with thousands and thousands of god myths.
This isn’t game theory where there are four choices 1) Believe, die, find no god, no punishment 2) Believe, die, find your god, reward! 3) Don’t believe, find no god, no punishment 4) Don’t believe, find a god, get punished.
This is more like a roulette wheel. There are many choices of gods to believe in. How do we choose which belief is most accurate? I use reason and evidence. None of the the evidence points to the existence of any gods, just like on a properly balanced roulette wheel, none of the evidence points to the ball landing on “19.” It may land on “19,” but that’s not a good reason to put all your money on it.
Aren’t you just a liar?
By the way, if there is a god, even if you’ve decided to “believe” in the right one, isn’t the fact that you didn’t come by the belief organically, but instead had to pretend to believe a thing just to cover your ass from some imaginary threat a deception on your part? Aren’t you trying to fool the god into thinking you accept it as true? Can belief really be decided upon? I mean, I know the sun isn’t going to shine silver tomorrow morning. It’ll be yellowish, like every other day. I can’t just decide I believe it will be silver tomorrow, that’s not how we believe things. I can’t just believe my car has wings. I can lie and say I believe it, but I’m not going to fly over a cliff. By “deciding” to believe anything, you’re basically lying. Do you think the god you’re pretending to believe in is so stupid that it wouldn’t know you’re a liar?
(via cjlaroza)
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (NIV 1 Corinthians 1:18) We see what this verse tells us everyday. People look at us as foolish, even though they are perishing.
Well, this amounts to nothing more than name calling. Real mature for the supposed divine creator.
Some people
Who you calling “some people?”
reblogged my original Purpose post. They didn’t understand obviously because they said, “What if that child cures cancer.” What purpose is there in curing cancer if we all die anyway and there is no God?
People wouldn’t have to have cancer. They could enjoy a cancer-free life with their loved ones before they die anyway and there is no god.
There is no point in saving lives if their is no God.
*there
And yes there is. Living is fun and I want to live. Life is where all the best stuff happens. Have you heard the albums Jimi Hendrix recorded after he died? They’re terrible! He clearly was at his creative peak between the time he was born and the time he died. Why isn’t enjoying life and wanting to prolong it enough? Why do I need to follow it up with some magical trip to never never land?
You live and you die in a world with no God.
Yeah! That’s what I’m saying, and it’s OK.
A world with God you are dead, born again, and then given an eternal life.
Depending on which particular god myth you believe for no good reason because there’s no evidence for it. Your desire to live forever can’t make it so.
Also we don’t have our children glorify us because we are not perfect and technically we indirectly made them if God exists.
Nah, son, children are made using your junk. It involves a lot of stickiness. Also, you missed the point of my analogy. Why would a god need constant praise, why would that be something that a god would desire? He’s already a god, he’s got limitless powers. He could play any Super Nintendo game he wants and his console never farts out, no matter how old it is. He never even has to blow on the game. Why would he have needs or desires at all? If you were the most powerful entity in any dimension, how could you want for anything?
God is perfect though and he formed us and gave us our life. Why would we not praise his gracious name?
If he was perfect and he created us, you’d think he’d have gotten a better result.
NEWARK, N.J. — The agreement with prosecutors, reached after a priest’s conviction on charges that he fondled a teenage boy were thrown out, was unequivocal. The Rev. Michael Fugee could return to ministry in the Archdiocese of Newark, but was barred from having unsupervised contact with minors or a job that requires him to oversee or minister to children under the age of 18.
Fox News links National Day of Reason to Holocaust.
“You know the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust.” — Some idiot on Fox.It’s like a living monument to Godwin’s Law.
