In Reply to: proud atheist posted by susie on May 03, 2005 at 20:32:17:
C'mon Susie--I never did a "sledging of [you] and atheists". Be honest, now.
I like you. The American Atheists are easy pickings, I've seen.
Here are the links, for those who are interested (I really don't intend to enter a Carol-like diatribe and harangue, here, with you, Susie--Hey! You're not really Carol, are you? :-) ):
http://www.exfamily.org/chatbbs/genx/posts/20866.htm
http://www.exfamily.org/chatbbs/genx/posts/20894.htm
http://www.exfamily.org/chatbbs/genx/posts/20899.htm
http://www.exfamily.org/chatbbs/genx/posts/20916.htm
I worked with some American Atheist followers of Madeleine Murray O'Hare while working for Brown & Root, here in Texas. All I did was attend a lunchtime Bible study with 3 or 4 other employees. I not only had my life threatened by them, they literally tried to electrocute me, and said, "Hey, another fried Christian would just be hilarious!"
Madeliene's son is now a Christian minister. Karen Zerby lost her son from her horrible belief system, too--extreme irony! Neither ultimately succeeded in the indoctrination of a child who was to have been her successor.
I'm not real impressed with the organization. They murdered and cut up the corpse of their own leader for money! I suspect no thinking person would align with their blatant immorality; the inevitable fruit of the absense of morals.
Also, it's obvious that atheists Marx, Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot have maligned, tortured and mudered far more people than what MMO's organization calls "godists" have; historically. we're talking millions and millions and millions in the modern era, and it's still continuing; it just doesn't make most of the news. Take a good look on the Internet.
By the way; Fifth Columnists who helped the atheist Soviets overthrow the satellite countries of Eastern Europe were executed once the Soviets were in power were killed, as they couldn't be trusted in the new order. Similarly, Mao Dsedong killed indiscriminately on the same basis in China, and preached the necessity of continuous counterrevolution. I've read the Little Red Book.
A precursor to atheism was the Marquis de Sade's dictum that "Whatever is, is right!" There's literally no difference between that and a social "survival of the fittest."
Another extension of rationalist/materialist/atheistic evolution was the "Social Darwinism" which was the basis for the oppression of all sorts of ethnic grouops in the US, in the early 1900s. And so on, and so on.
Theists, not atheists, discovered Algebra, Calculus, and Quantum theory and mechanics, established most systems of genuine law (versus KGB and pogroms) in the free world, established the first American penitentiary instead of continuing public hangings for the violation of most laws, including misdemeanors.
And the atheist philosophical apologists, as CS Lewis pointed out, merely argue in a circle. They use bad science,and worse philosophy and morals.
What is Martin L. Bard's claim to fame? What has he done, but parrot others, whose philosophical arguments have already been easily defeated? I'd make an ansewr to his diatribe on the page you gave us a link to, but it's just such old hat!
And, the current age is post-modern, not atheistic, which means that atheism is intellectually passe, and that most writers and thinkers today validate the spiritual experiences of all, without pretending the atheists' pretentious philosophical certainty.
And don't even get me started about the god of the atheists--the Big Bang. "It" is eternal, has omnipotent creative powers, supercedes all known laws of physics and "magically" gives its own uninterruptible, and undiscernible, powers of causality to mere "time and chance", and can, in a definitely "god-like" manner, interrupt its main premise of ultra-determinism with an occasional "hopeful monster" of punctuated equilibrium" at whim.
"It's" just a lame philosophical pseudo-copy of the God of the Bible.
Atheism was (yes, past tense) a flash in the pan, historically speaking.
Please don't take it personally, Susie. I'm not "sledging" anybody. It's just that I believe that atheism is a "Journey" to nowhere.
I rejected rationalist/materialist/atheism and evolution PRE-TF, because it held no water as a belief system, and that same observation was the founding principle for the entire counterculture! The philosophical failure of atheism's weak hypotrheses led me to philosophical nihilism, and made me easy prey for people like Berg.
Atheism is merely a grouping of extremely weak hypotheses. Prove me wrong with reasonable arguments, not Mr. Baird's a priori circular reasoning.
Did he never hear of false premise, incomplete middle, begging the question, and circular argumets? And he's supposed to be the towering intellect of the "American" Atheists?
IMO, his essay is crap! He violates all four of these major impediments to actual linear, sequentially-developmental logic.
Give me a break. Please.
Atheism tried (again; past tense) to bring the philosophy of data-free determinism to science and analytical philosophy.
Calvin tried the same with the Gospel, IMO.
Both make pretentions to philosophical certainty.
I say that amorality of either kind has grave consequences.
Berg took his own version of Calvinistic determinism and said that you could come to his "other jesus" (2 Cor 11 type), live like Hell, "using feigned words to make merchandise" (2 Pe 2) of other human beings, and still expect Heaven.
Yeah; right.
Again, I invite you to email me, versus "sledging" me on Journeys, after I honestly try to engage you on Generation eXers.
That's simply foul play, Susie.
Do Aussies say "That's not cricket!', or is that just the Brits? :-)