The problem with atheism.

[crumbs]

Why would a God need people to worship him?  Think about it.  If you were all-powerful, benevolent and wise and created your own little universe populated by little beings far less powerful than you, why would you worry so much about them worshipping you or worshipping false idols etc?  Doesn't that seem petty?  And petulant?  If that's the guy ruling paradise I'm not so sure I want to be there.

Of course, priests DO CARE about which God you are worshipping because it directly affects their bottom line.  

Religion.  Just another scam.  The second biggest scam in the history of the world.

Your problem is not with religion (i assume you are talking about Christianity), but with the Church & the Christendom.  Read Matthew 23 -- Jesus shares your ideas about priests.

As far as idolatry & graven images, that's O.T., Exodus stuff.  Think of it as your parents teaching you not to stick your hand into the fire -- you burning yourself doesn't hurt them, the reason they pwn you for playing with matches is to *teach* you, not because they're petty.

I actually don't have a problem with religion.  It's obviously false but then people are allowed to believe false things if they want.  As long as I don't have to have anything to do with it, people can kneel and pray and "amen" to whatever imaginary friends they like.

As for the rest, I'm aware of the bible cherry-picking.     Your analogy about the children isn't a good one.  That's a real danger.  Let's assume that this God nonsense is true for a second.  The god would know that they were the only God.  What harm would it do to him or the beings he had created if they worship a false god or gods?  No-one's being hurt.  

If man's completeness is predicated on his relationship with the true God (and there exists a true God), there's obviously plenty of harm in worshiping false ones.
All this talk, of course, has nothing to do with true faith, which lies outside of logic and reason.  Faith, by definition, is fully opaque to rational discourse.

[the joint]

Why would a God need people to worship him?  Think about it.  If you were all-powerful, benevolent and wise and created your own little universe populated by little beings far less powerful than you, why would you worry so much about them worshipping you or worshipping false idols etc?  Doesn't that seem petty?  And petulant?  If that's the guy ruling paradise I'm not so sure I want to be there.

Of course, priests DO CARE about which God you are worshipping because it directly affects their bottom line.  

Religion.  Just another scam.  The second biggest scam in the history of the world.

Your problem is not with religion (i assume you are talking about Christianity), but with the Church & the Christendom.  Read Matthew 23 -- Jesus shares your ideas about priests.

As far as idolatry & graven images, that's O.T., Exodus stuff.  Think of it as your parents teaching you not to stick your hand into the fire -- you burning yourself doesn't hurt them, the reason they pwn you for playing with matches is to *teach* you, not because they're petty.

I actually don't have a problem with religion.  It's obviously false but then people are allowed to believe false things if they want.  As long as I don't have to have anything to do with it, people can kneel and pray and "amen" to whatever imaginary friends they like.

As for the rest, I'm aware of the bible cherry-picking.     Your analogy about the children isn't a good one.  That's a real danger.  Let's assume that this God nonsense is true for a second.  The god would know that they were the only God.  What harm would it do to him or the beings he had created if they worship a false god or gods?  No-one's being hurt.  

If man's completeness is predicated on his relationship with the true God (and there exists a true God), there's obviously plenty of harm in worshiping false ones.
All this talk, of course, has nothing to do with true faith, which lies outside of logic and reason.  Faith, by definition, is fully opaque to rational discourse.

Semantic fun...

To not know is to doubt. To know is to not doubt.  To doubt is to not have faith.  To not doubt is to have faith.  To not know is to not have faith.  To know is to have faith.

Also...

What one can prove he cannot know.  What one knows he cannot prove.  Scientists really need to understand the importance of this statement.

[semaforo]

    God is entirely free of need, and does not need our worship. Worship is the most beneficial thing in existence for we created beings. The universe, as well as religion, are created for our benefit.

   The utility of faith can be logically demonstrated, as I tried to demonstrate earlier in this thread. The argument is further bolstered by the placebo effect and other anecdotal evidence.

  I would simply point anyone who doubts the reality of phenomenon that are not empirically observable to DMT.

   Listen to the prophets- their message is one. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist.

[User705]

What God(s) are best to worship? There are so many to choose from, how does one go about deciding?

Flip a coin.  If god exists he will make the coin land for the right choice.  If god doesn't exist it doesn't matter.

Coin has only two (three) sides

Grab a Zoohedron dice if you find that many religions appealing. 

[luv2drnkbr]

So I did a quick google search on Richard Dawkins today.
If I were an atheist I would start using Penn Jilette as an example instead. Just saying.
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/10/richard_dawkins_defends_mild_pedophilia_says_it_does_not_cause_lasting_harm/

Very cool thread so far.

I'm not sure why you think it's somehow bad that he claims that the punishment for and our cultural view of crimes should be related to the damage they do.  All he said was he was molested as a child and that it didn't cause him any terrible lasting damage.

Crimes should be judged by the pain and suffering they cause.  That's a reasonable thing to say.

[User705]

Off topic but the child issue is a problem caused by government arbitrarily declaring someone a child and not a child based only on age and not their actions.  Having said that once there can be found a better way of properly identifying a child it is not ok to do things to them without their consent which can't be given by a child.

[hawkeye]

If man's completeness is predicated on his relationship with the true God (and there exists a true God), there's obviously plenty of harm in worshiping false ones.

Well this gets back to my original point, that of course those who espouse religion (and benefit from it) would claim something like "man's completeness is predicated on his relationship with the true God".  But there's no empirical proof of such a claim.

[hawkeye]

So I did a quick google search on Richard Dawkins today.
If I were an atheist I would start using Penn Jilette as an example instead. Just saying.
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/10/richard_dawkins_defends_mild_pedophilia_says_it_does_not_cause_lasting_harm/

Very cool thread so far.

I'm not sure why you think it's somehow bad that he claims that the punishment for and our cultural view of crimes should be related to the damage they do.  All he said was he was molested as a child and that it didn't cause him any terrible lasting damage.

Crimes should be judged by the pain and suffering they cause.  That's a reasonable thing to say.

That could easily be Dawkin's minimising the problem in his own mind because no-one protected him, and probably no-one believed him or validated his experience or something like that.   He claims it has had no lasting effect but I bet if a psychologist were to diagnose him they would find negative consequences in his life, because it is obvious he hasn't dealt with it if he is saying things like that.

Incidentally, what Dawkins (or any athiest) says doesn't reflect on atheists or atheism in general.   Because it's not a religion and there are no dictates.  It's simply people who don't believe God claims.  That's it.  They don't have anything else in common.

[luv2drnkbr]

I'm not sure why you think it's somehow bad that he claims that the punishment for and our cultural view of crimes should be related to the damage they do.  All he said was he was molested as a child and that it didn't cause him any terrible lasting damage.

Crimes should be judged by the pain and suffering they cause.  That's a reasonable thing to say.

That could easily be Dawkin's minimising the problem in his own mind because no-one protected him, and probably no-one believed him or validated his experience or something like that.   He claims it has had no lasting effect but I bet if a psychologist were to diagnose him they would find negative consequences in his life, because it is obvious he hasn't dealt with it if he is saying things like that.

Or maybe.... it just didn't have much of an effect.

Kids don't know what sex is, they don't know what's appropriate or not.  If he was molested, he may have not even known about it and just chalked it up to weird tickling.  It may truly have been a completely innocuous experience as far as he was concerned.

I'm not saying it WAS innocuous, I'm just saying that it's an entirely reasonable possibility that nobody seems to be admitting... that it actually isn't that harmful to the child is some situations.

[crumbs]

If man's completeness is predicated on his relationship with the true God (and there exists a true God), there's obviously plenty of harm in worshiping false ones.

Well this gets back to my original point, that of course those who espouse religion (and benefit from it) would claim something like "man's completeness is predicated on his relationship with the true God".  But there's no empirical proof of such a claim.

There is no empirical proof that universal noncontradiction is valid [ ~(A & ~A)], you are accepting universal noncontradiction on *faith*.
Faith, by definition, is a belief *not* based on proof.  If something is verifiable, it is no longer faith.  Yet you are asking for proof.

[semaforo]

  Faith can also be equated with trust. I have faith that the sun is going to come up tomorrow, although there is no empirical proof that it will, because you cannot prove that there is not a mass of anti-matter hurtling through space that doesn't show up on any instruments and is going to blot out the sun sometime in the next day. The belief that the sun will still exist tomorrow is therefore irrational.

   It has been popular in some circles recently to replace the word "god" with "the universe." If you are talking about anything that is as small as the universe, or as small as an infinite number of universes, then you are not talking about the Most High. The insistence by some groups on emphasizing the importance of worshiping something smaller than the universe as being key to personal salvation is what caused me to reject God and label myself as an atheist. All praise and thanks to the Creator of everything that exists that I was able to travel outside of the US and see other perspectives...

[the joint]

  Faith can also be equated with trust. I have faith that the sun is going to come up tomorrow, although there is no empirical proof that it will, because you cannot prove that there is not a mass of anti-matter hurtling through space that doesn't show up on any instruments and is going to blot out the sun sometime in the next day. The belief that the sun will still exist tomorrow is therefore irrational.

   It has been popular in some circles recently to replace the word "god" with "the universe." If you are talking about anything that is as small as the universe, or as small as an infinite number of universes, then you are not talking about the Most High. The insistence by some groups on emphasizing the importance of worshiping something smaller than the universe as being key to personal salvation is what caused me to reject God and label myself as an atheist. All praise and thanks to the Creator of everything that exists that I was able to travel outside of the US and see other perspectives...

I prefer a different approach...

First off, anything that is not capable of being perceived is of total irrelevance.  The old question "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, did it actually fall?" can be answered with simply, "Stop asking a ridiculous question!"  When people talk about parallel or infinite universes, they trod down the same path.  To make things simple, we can simply refer to the largest set of observable phenomena as the 'Real Universe', for if there were something real enough outside of this universe so as to be considered real, then it would be in the Real Universe!

Now, since we have defined the largest set or system of observable phenomenon, talking about the "Most High", as you put it, can be done by describing the syntax governing this largest set.  The challenge, of course, is avoiding slipping into an infinite regression, a 'tower of turtles,' in which every description leads to a logical contradiction.  This can be avoided by understanding how logic actually works, and to demonstrate, I will use the physical dimensions of space and time to show that logic itself has higher and lower dimensions.

We all know that 0-dimensions is represented by a point, 1-dimension by a line, 2-dimensions by a plane, and so on.  Or, phrased another way, the first dimension represents an ininite number of configurations of zero-dimensional space, the 2nd dimension represents an infinite number of configurations of 1-dimensional space, and so on.  Understanding lower dimensions is easy because we inhabit a level of syntax that is higher than the lower dimensions.  But how can we talk about higher dimensions and gain understanding about them?  Well, as it turns out we need to simply 'pretend' that we inhabit a higher level syntax and we need to thrust higher syntaxes below us.  This might sound confusing, but ill give you a simple example.

When I draw a tesseract on a piece of paper, I gain an understanding of 4-dimensional spacetime by thrusting it first into the 2nd dimension.  Logic operates in the same way, and aside from straw man fallacies, some of the most common errors in logic are made when arguments contain elements from multiple levels of logical syntax.  To put it simply, there are an infinite number of syntax levels, but we can begin to form an accurate model of reality by thrusting all of those infinite levels below us.  What this does is remove all of the constraints caused by higher levels of syntax - that is, the things we can never fully understand.  Then we can look at the universe from above, like our 3-dimensional selves looking at a 2-dimensional plane and understanding it's basic structure.  What results is something like a tesseract, the most perfect representation of 4-dimensions that we can observe from the 3rd dimension.

[pstudart]

The problem with atheism is that it doesn't regard the universal consciousness or the consciousness of nature. Lsd shrooms and most importantly DMT won't allow me to be completely atheist.

[C10H15N]

The problem with atheism is that it doesn't regard the universal consciousness or the consciousness of nature. Lsd shrooms and most importantly DMT won't allow me to be completely atheist.

A really good drug trip, like god, is all in your head.   

[the joint]

The problem with atheism is that it doesn't regard the universal consciousness or the consciousness of nature. Lsd shrooms and most importantly DMT won't allow me to be completely atheist.

A really good drug trip, like god, is all in your head.   

I hope you realize that the reality you stare at is an output of processed information.  In other words, when you try to study the outside world, you're really studying the results of an internal process.

[C10H15N]

I hope you realize that the reality you stare at is an output of processed information.  In other words, when you try to study the outside world, you're really studying the results of an internal process.

Are you sure there is an outside world?

[JoeQ]

The biggest problem with Athiesm is that Richard Dawkins gives it a bad name.

[the joint]

I hope you realize that the reality you stare at is an output of processed information.  In other words, when you try to study the outside world, you're really studying the results of an internal process.

Are you sure there is an outside world?

How about I show you a proof that the boundary of a boundary = 0 and so we can see how words like inside and outside slide down the rabbit hole awfully quick?

[xxjs]

I see no problems with atheism, but huge problems with atheism discussions.

[the joint]

I see no problems with atheism, but huge problems with atheism discussions.

I personally have problems when people think that discussing the nature of our existence should be avoided as if it should be regarded as taboo or reserved for the elephant in the room.  Absolute truth can be established, and by definition absolute truth takes precedence over everything else.  But if you'd like this can be a discussion about cat memes or something equally trivial.