God is not great: How religion poisons everthing

[Mr Arkadin]

Atheism (like any other ism) is NOT about reality.
Because it excludes some facts of this world's reality

Still waiting for these facts too.

[BingoTheClowno]

I understand that you are offended when we say there is no god yet every day we are bombarded by people speaking about god is if it is real and we are supposed to quietly live with that.

No man, it is about tolerance. Live and let live. If they are confident that god exists then they shouldn't be worried if an atheist on the fringe of their reality claims it doesn't.

[braincell]

[braincell]

Try Prozac.

Sorry Kensuguro.

[BingoTheClowno]

I don't like your statements? Should I LIKE your obfuscating and false statements? You don't like to back up your claims with any source? Can you at all?

I know you dont like them.
But also your allegations wont diminish your dogmatic denial of other people's statements.
Sources are necessary when you only cite other peoples thoughts and experience.
You know what common sense is and you might even have made the experience on your own.
But you would not admit that and even try to understand.

So how do you prove this to be so? With more of your own thoughts?

[BingoTheClowno]

I understand that you are offended when we say there is no god yet every day we are bombarded by people speaking about god is if it is real and we are supposed to quietly live with that.

No offense taken You are free to assume there is no god. But why do you ask me for a proof ? Should I have it ?

Yes.

(because atheism is irrelevant to you, just in case)

[garyb]

Satanism worships Satan, atheism doesn't worship anything. You're being extremely evil by trying to vilify atheism by any means.

Nope. Sorry. Pretty much all the 'satanic' religions are atheist in nature. They do not believe in God or Satan as personal beings.
They see satan as the personification of mans primal nature and the antithesis of what they believe is a repressive diety (christ) and so worship that.
What they call satan is simply the worship of their own primal nature.

exactly. atheism is satanism disguised as intellectualism. as crowley said, "do what thou wilt". satanists(who think they are god or evolving into god) are the cause of stupid religions as well as the arfguments against them. they are templar crusaders, saturn worshippers, nimrod followers, occultists, and attendees of the bohemian grove in northern california. they are bilderburgers, they are the keepers of secrets for their own power, and they are the ones putting forward stupid memetic ideas like the ones thrown around here.

george bush is not a christian!!! he is an occultist, just like tony, i make a magic circle everyday and channel "the light"(lucifer) in order to know what to do(according to an interview in the london times), blair.

messiah, the burrito analogy, while fun, is meaningless. the true god, by definition created logic and all other things in this universe. such a god is not from this universe, although the universe is from him. therefore, the laws of this universe don't apply to him, even if that makes you uncomfortable.

braincell, prozac is one of the most destructive drugs known to man. all of the really insane violence(mass killings, standing on the roof naked stabbing yourself, drowning your children, etc) lately has been commited by folks on seretonin uptake inhibitors. that stuff makes people absolutely lose their minds after they've used it long enough, or when they miss doses. it creates a dream state deeper than in sleep. please don't promote dangerous drugs as a solution. religion would be better than that any day.

[Mr Arkadin]

Apparently i'm now a satanist, thanks garyb. i've just developed a sudden urge to kill a small child

i find it odd that someone who questions the indoctrination by the Bilderburgers, Templars etc. wouldn't think that Christianity (or any other religion) is also another level of indoctrination and ultimately part of the bigger world domination plan. i would have thought someone with your questioning mind would question the validity and truth of religion.

[garyb]

i never said you were a satanist, and i also said those guys were as reposonsible for one false doctrine as any other. i did say that satanism(according to most declared satanists)is atheistic and that it is the worship of the self. i also said that religion is organized by such men. i agree with the world indoctrination theory for the most part.

what i also said was this has nothing to do with whether there's a god or not.

i don't have any personal animosity towards anyone for their veiws in particular and i'm not nessessarily putting ANY value judgements on anyone, unless they're working to harm/enslave others.

regardless of any doctrinal/belief disagreements , i'm sure you're a good person Mr Arkadin.

-btw-child sacrifice is usually a ceremony done by those wishing for certain kinds of power. most satanic activity is much more banal than that!

[Mr Arkadin]

i never said you were a satanist, and i also said those guys were as reposonsible for one false doctrine as any other. i did say that satanism(according to most declared satanists)is atheistic and that it is the worship of the self.

You see my problem with that sentence (and it may just be the way i read it rather than what you meant) is that atheism=worship of the self. Believe me i worship no-one (except maybe Gary Numan ) but i certainly don't venerate myself above others - this is why i hate -isms when applied to what you might call non-believers (another term i hate - it assumes the believers are correct from the outset). i have no doctrine, my values have been passed on to me from my parents and education (Church of England and Roman Catholics by the way - my education, not my parents that is). i think i am a mostly a decent

person, i think Blair is worse than Saddam, i demonstrated against the war in Iraq and i only sacrifice children in a leap year.

i find it incredible that here in the 21st C that we still have religions, with more freedom to express opinions at odds with the norm than at any other time (unless Blair and co get their way) people still believe highly inaccurate texts very obviously written by mortals and not God. i mean if you were trying to sell a film script thus:
"There's this guy, born of a virgin, wakes the dead walks on water, gets killed and then rises from the dead and it turns He was the Son of God all the time."
You might get the response:
"So this is a fantasy movie then, like Lord of the Rings or something?"

Yet because it's in a 2000 year old book people believe it.

i just don't get it.

[BingoTheClowno]

The God Who Wasn't There

In this provocative, critically acclaimed documentary, you will discover:

The early founders of Christianity seem wholly unaware of the idea of a human Jesus


The Jesus of the Gospels bears a striking resemblance to other ancient heroes and the figureheads of pagan savior cults


Contemporary Christians are largely ignorant of the origins of their religion


Fundamentalism is as strong today as it ever has been, with an alarming 44% of Americans believing Jesus will return to earth in their lifetimes


And God simply isn't there

Video Clips

[garyb]

so it's a specific god that everyone has a problem with....

atheist because you don't believe in Jesus as revealed by the Roman church? sounds like a personal problem....

kinda limited in your thinking. yes, no, up, down.....kinda insulting to the whole of reality, but that's just my opinion. it's like the things people think(that god is this or that that people are good or evil, that they want more power money or..other petty concerns) are the only important things about existance....

[braincell]

Atheism is not about worshiping the self. I'm sure there are plenty of hedonistic christians and generous atheists.

As an atheist I find jesus a good target because the christians are more annoying than jews, muslims, buddhists and hindus.

I once met a buddhist monk at his temple (a former country christian church). He wore a white robe and had a shaved head and a constant big smile on his face. He showed me some round river stones and explained they were the bones of buddha. I asked if I could hold them and he agreed. Then I told him I think these are stones. He looked very surprised to hear that. Then he thought for a moment and he said that in those days people were 20 feet high so maybe they had very hard bones. I can't forget that man, so friendly. He wasn't offended that I questioned the "bones".

If christians were like that, I would have no problem with them and when I say that, I am talking about the organization, the constant in your face attitude, rants about things they see as a problem with society, campaigns to ban gay marriage (a law which passed in my state), attempts to sneak religion into public schools, attempts to divert tax payer money to religious schools.

They don't just have a peaceful time in church like the monk. They are activists and so they must be stopped before they ruin everything.

[kensuguro]

ah don't worry about it braincell no offense taken. (I couldn't see how prozac related to me, but anyway...) I'm not trying to change world here, but I do appreciate your intellectual handling of my arguments. Besides, I agree with many of the points that you made.

btw, off topic but Bingo, that article you posted about the Lucifer effect was a great read. I was also surprised it was written by the guy who did the Stanford prison experiment, which was also a great read.

Also, it seems like there is avery strong feeling against the Christian definition of a god.. perhaps things are different in a buddhist or shinto style "there's a bunch of gods" style concept?

It seems to me, that Japan is extremely uninsterested in religion partially because of the "everything is a god" concept. So since everything is a god, then it really doesn't matter too much any more. And so, generally, you treat things with respect (like don't cut down big trees), but otherwise, it seems like most Japanese people aren't interested in any gods.

Also, religious things have become so transparent and embedded in culture, that most rituals and what nots have become more of a lifestyle, or cultural traditions. So, once a religion's become so "softcore", I'm not sure if it still functions as an effective religion or not.

edit: ah, you beat me to it braincell.

[alfonso]

Atheism is a concept that has its precise origin in religion. It is a word that was created to describe a crime.

Your source please.

few examples:

1546 Etienne Dolet, was condemned for atheism and burnt at Lyons, along with his books.

1553 Michael Servetus, the Spanish physician who discovered pulmonary blood circulation was burned at the stake for heresy. Servetus had criticized the Trinity and infant baptism.

1619 Lucilio Vanini, philosopher, teacher and freethinker.Iin 1616 the ex-Carmelite monk Vanini imprudently published his thoughts in “De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis” (“of the marvelous secrets of the queen and goddess of the mortal ones, nature.") Vanini rejected Christianity as a fiction invented by priests and argued for natural explanations for miracles. He was taken at Toulouse, condemned, his tongue cut out, strangled and burned.

Among those imprisoned for atheism was Denis Diderot (1713–1784), one of the Enlightenment's most prominent philosophes, and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopédie.....

Make a Search on Spanish Inquisition and just have a look yourself. Anyone who has studied just a tlny bit of history knows that the people slaughtered in Europe because not believing in god or in a particular version of it are several millions. The ways it was done can be incredibly disturbing.

[BingoTheClowno]

I know it's disturbing. Some of the greatests of minds of this Earth were destroyed by this scourge that we call religion.

I've found something on the etymology of the word on Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
In early Ancient Greek, the adjective atheos (ἄθεος, from the privative ἀ- + θεός "god") meant "godless". The word acquired an additional meaning in the 5th century BCE, "severing relations with the gods" or "denying the gods, ungodly", with more active connotations than ἀσεβής (asebēs) or "impious". Modern translations of classical texts sometimes render atheos as "atheistic". As an abstract noun, there was also ἀθεότης (atheotēs), "atheism". Cicero transliterated the Greek word into the Latin atheos. The term found frequent use in the debate between early Christians and pagans, with each side attributing it, in the pejorative sense, to the other.[10]

In English, the term atheism was derived from the French athéisme in about 1587.[11] The term atheist (from Fr. athée), in the sense of "one who denies or disbelieves the existence of God",[12] predates atheism in English, being first attested in about 1571.[13] Atheist as a label of practical godlessness was used at least as early as 1577.[14] Related words emerged later: deist in 1621[15], theist in 1662[16]; theism in 1678[17]; and deism in 1682.[18] Deism and theism changed meanings slightly around 1700, due to the influence of atheism; deism was originally used as a synonym for today's theism, but came to denote a separate philosophical doctrine.[19]

Karen Armstrong writes that "During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the word 'atheist' was still reserved exclusively for polemic … The term 'atheist' was an insult. Nobody would have dreamed of calling himself an atheist."[20] Atheism was first used to describe a self-avowed belief in late 18th-century Europe, specifically denoting disbelief in the monotheistic Judeo-Christian God.[21] In the 20th century, globalization contributed to the expansion of the term to refer to disbelief in all deities, though it remains common in Western society to describe atheism as simply "disbelief in God."[22] Most recently, there has been a push in certain philosophical circles to redefine atheism negatively, as the "absence of belief in deities," rather than as a belief in its own right; this definition has become popular in atheist communities, though its mainstream usage has been limited.

[BingoTheClowno]

btw, off topic but Bingo, that article you posted about the Lucifer effect was a great read. I was also surprised it was written by the guy who did the Stanford prison experiment, which was also a great read.

Many college psychology manuals are written by him.

[braincell]

They are going to say that was in the past yet here we are today still killing people because we are afraid of them.

[garyb]

bingo, thanks for the wiki. etymology always helps to understand the language. ok, i see your opinion, i still think you haven't gone far enough towards the source of the problem and you are blaming the tool rather than the tool's weilder. interesting also, that in the modern time, atheism is more about disavowal of anything rather than the avowal of anything. it is pure negativity(but i understand that it could be thought of as for a positive purpose)

hitchins is still a bohemian grove lackey and has a job to do. many, many scientists and most psychologists are just pagans, which makes sense according to the wiki(against the gods, worshippers of self and will, especially opposed to the christian god). you just don't believe in any creator and think that religions and especially christians are the cause of all the wars, even though it was christopher hitchins himself who was demanding that the americans and british move against sadaam. here's the guy who says religion is the cause of the troubles calling for military action which everyone knew even at the beginning would become the mired down bloodbath that it is. please don't say that this action he called for is the cause of islamic extremism, sadaam was as secular and as much an atheist as anyone on this messageboard....



in the small veiw, i agree with every point that bingo and braincell are espousing. in the big veiw i find the ideas slightly misguided. but that's me and my veiwpoint on the freaking mess that science has made....which is not that i'm against science, just the dependace on it to solve problems....

-btw-to back up my assertations about scientists and psychologists, here's a link to a letter from joseph campbell to marjorie cameron, star of many of kenneth anger's(church of satan) horror movies, and made maps for the allies during world war 2 and knew churchill and was wife to JPL founder jack parsons, the guy who was aleister crowley's right-hand man in the USA, who worked on the fuel for the saturn v rocket to send men to the moon and was doing sex magic rituals with miss cameron and scientology's l. ron hubbard. also, here's a link to a story about mr. parson, for some fun google "Jack Parsons", "Aleister Crowley", Kenneth Anger" and "Marjorie Cameron":
http://www.foolsrealm.com/artexhibit/campbell.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Cameron
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons
http://www.aci.net/kalliste/jack_parsons.htm

[Mr Arkadin]

so it's a specific god that everyone has a problem with....

atheist because you don't believe in Jesus as revealed by the Roman church? sounds like a personal problem....

i don't have a problem with a specific god - i think they're all crap. In the UK Christians seem very different to those described by braincell (or maybe it's just that there are less of them so they appear less vocal). The reason i was talking about the Christian church is two-fold:
1. The people discussing god here appear to be Christians
2. i know more about Christianity than i do about other religions