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One of the lowest atheist nations

Tucker Case said:
That covers about everything. Can you come up with an example of something "moral" that is not covered by those two concepts?
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Thats not what I'm aiming for.

What I am aming for is...well...self-sacrifice...for what? for whom? Hardwork for whom?
Even more improtant, can you come up with something that is self-sacrificing and requires hardwork that is immoral?
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No, those are both good qualities to have. I'm not arguing that.
 
DarkWizard12 said:
Thats not what I'm aiming for.

What I am aming for is...well...self-sacrifice...for what? for whom?
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There is no for what. There is no gain. That's what the "sacrifice" part implies.

The "for whom" would be those other than self.

Hardwork for whom?
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Just in general. I think you are overcomplicating an exceptionally simple concept.
 
DarkWizard12 said:
If Obama was truly a Muslim, and given McCain is an atheist(which he probably is, I really have no information on that.) I'd probably vote for Obama. or given how socialist he is, not vote at all.

There is a certain serving quality that comes with religious people. And I don't mean "christian" or "jewish" or "muslim" people. I mean religious people. You could be a pastafarian for all I care, as long as you actually religious about it, rather than just trying to make a point.

Religion is more important in integrity than anything else, especially in these times. Religion, when taught as it is supposed to be, teaches servitude and humility.
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You fall into that indoctrinated trap like so many of needing to believe in something. What quality comes from Religious people? If you are referring to leaders needing to be Religious, surely thats a little paradoxical. For them to be a true leader why does he/she need guidance from a superior being? If he/she does indeed possess the desired attributes for being a leader, they should not need guidance. I would much rather have a "free thinker" someone who will embrace all types of knowledge and not a person restricted to the confines of Religion. Religion on the whole is at loggerheads with "Science". Science is the one true field that can show change, from the past, in the present and in the future.

Paul.
 
DarkWizard12 said:
HAHAHAHA! Says WHO?
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Says experimental evidence and reality. Less you are clairvoyant or telepathic or something cool like that. Are you?

DarkWizard12 said:
Is their religion to lie, cheat, and steal? What religion is that? I want it!
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It's usually a flavor of Christianity of sorts. The point remains, someone claims religion; how do you know they are "religious" by your standards? You don't, but you'll vote for that person over an atheist because of bigotry. In the end, you're probably worse off because your condescension and holier-than-thou attitude forces you to discount a sector that could produce quality candidates. There is no statistical difference between theists and atheists.

DarkWizard12 said:
Repeat: That. is. not. what. I'm. saying.
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Then you need to revisit the English language and figure out how to word it so it doesn't come off like you are saying it. Your bigotry and hatred is easy for people to see. And the path it leads you down is one of ignorance.

DarkWizard12 said:
Yes, it does.

You see, I MADE THE DISTINCTION IN MY FIRST POST!!!!!

You can say "being christian/islam/ doesn't mean squat
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Your "distinction" is pointless because you can't assess it according to your definition. There's no way for you to tell if one claims religion as to whether they are "religious" or not. Thus you mostly just accept the religious self ascription at face value and in the process look at what we get left with. All sorts of people claiming religion whom aren't.

Again, reality and measurement are stacked against you on this one. You can't possibly know who's "religious" or not, your bigotry throws out an entire group who could serve better as a politician, and more times than not religion is just a show politicians put on for others. Voting for someone merely because they claim religion is idiotic. Thinking that because they claim they're religious makes them more likely to have "moral fiber" or backbone or whatever it is that you wish to claim is equally idiotic. There is no statistical difference between theists and atheists on this front.

DarkWizard12 said:
Quit your ranting and we might actually reach an understanding. Untill, you learn my distinction between a "religious person" and "a person who has a religion", all this measn nothing.
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I know what your little definition is. It's completely pointless because you can't accurately assess it on candidates. I know where you are coming from. It's a world called religious intolerance and atheists have had to put up with it for quite some time already. It's what drives people to wage holy wars, burn people at the stake, drive people different from them from their lands, etc. I've seen well the face of what you propose, and it's one of evil and sin.

DarkWizard12 said:
Bob barr won't win though.
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Bob Barr had nothing to do with what I was talking about.
 
Given that most of the world's inhabitants believe in a higher being, I don't think it's fair to really say that religion is the problem. It's people that are the problem. It's the whole "not the gun but the person who uses it" idea. Think about how many people, in terms of sheer numbers, believe in a religion, or are simply spiritually open. Now look at how many people commit heinous acts per year in the name of religion. They are a minority that sullies the name of the greater body of people. It's like saying Timothy Mcveigh represents all Americans.

I also disagree that religion hinders mental process. A lot of the world's greatest thinkers, whether they be scientists, philosophers, engineers, etc. believe in a higher power. Some draw strength and work ethic from their belief systems. It is ultimately the choice of the person if they don't want to be open to other ideas. Religion isn't telling them to be ignorant and hate other people, they themselves are listening to their peers who are telling them to do that.

I personally believe that each religion is a metaphor for the same connected experience we all have in our lives. Some call it God, some call it Nirvana, Allah, Om, whatever. The reverence each person feels when they are truly connected to their belief system... I think it transcends the wordings of any language or crede. If only that idea could be globalized, instead of the divisionist creeds of today... maybe we could see are all all two sides of the same coin.
 
macklin said:
Are Americans still deceived by religion? Why are they?
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Not to mince and parse your question, or indulge in semantic masturbation, but Americans are not deceived by religion. Americans, by a rather significant majority, are participants in religion; members of churches, mosques, synagogues and temples; readers of scriptures; practitioners of tradition, rite, and ritual. While we could argue the existence or nonexistence of the gods to no end, when it comes to religion, there is no debate. It definitely exists. And with or without the gods, it is a rich component in American culture.

Regards,
DAR
 
Two of the stupidist people on earth: those that believe in religion and those that do not believe in a creator.
 
DarkWizard12 said:
True, it is.

as for the US, the reason why we are religious goes all the way back to the early protestants who fleed europe to escape religious persecution. Because of this, people in our country tend to have a religious lean than most other countries.

And there is...really no other reason that that. Short and simple.
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Well, it's not really that short and simple. There is a bit more. The early and heavily populated portions of the east coast, were all of the thinking was being done was turning very secular. It was the solitude of the frontier that spawned more religious attitudes. with no schools, reading the bible was the first way children learned to read. Being alone, reading the bible gave comfort; you're not alone, god is with you. Church, which was held in someone's home most of the time, was the way people came together and it was a much more social event than most "churches" today.
Whether you were in the wilds of the shenandoah, mountains of appalachia, or the plains of the mid west, clinging to guns and religion really was your security in times of distress and solitude, which was every day.

This solitude also gave rise to whacked out interpretations.
 
Ikari said:
When it comes to politics, religion is only used for aesthetics. I love the "people need to be religious for me to vote for them" argument because most people in office now claim a religion and most people in office now are corrupt, lying, stealing bastards. Like claiming a religion actually does anything, it doesn't. There's nothing innate between an atheist or theist which makes on more "moral" than the other. Religion shows nothing other than you can get up and go to a building every week and give money to an organization. It says nothing about the implementation of the rules, or how closely one will actually follow them. How many people in jail are atheists?
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Religion just provides an excuse for being a douche bag while atheism, well it's all on you.
 
The lack of decent education keeps a lot of folks believing in fairy tales and other such non-sense.
 
The fact is that a good number of people came to this nation in order to have religious freedom and as a result their descendents carry on the traditions with a wide variety of sects, particularly those of a Protestant orientation.
 
macklin said:
The United States is one of the nations with the lowest rates of atheism. in europe nations range from thirty to seventy percent atheist. Are Americans still deceived by religion? Why are they?
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Can you prove God, specifically the Christian God, does not exist? If not, then I wouldn't roam around the Internet claiming religious people are being deceived.

The lack of decent education keeps a lot of folks believing in fairy tales and other such non-sense.
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I pose the same question to you. I am a Christian and I would pit my education up against anybody's.

Nobody can prove or disprove the existence of God - it's all about faith. My faith is no better or worse than the Jewish, Muslim, or atheist faith (or lack thereof). I do not appreciate the inference that I am an uneducated, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal because I choose to have faith. Similarly, I will not regard you as such for embracing an ideology inconsistent with human nature.
 
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macklin said:
The United States is one of the nations with the lowest rates of atheism. in europe nations range from thirty to seventy percent atheist. Are Americans still deceived by religion? Why are they?
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I would like you to qualify your statement with how you have received these figures. I have tried to find census for the statistics and only find a census for religion in the UK which was made in 2001. Showing 71% of the UK population stating they were Christian and only 15% stating they have no religion. I would also like you to provide your source on religious statistics.

Census 2001 - Commentaries - Ethnicity and religion

Macintosh said:
Can you prove God, specifically the Christian God, does not exist? If not, then I wouldn't roam around the Internet claiming religious people are being deceived.
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A debate on whether God exists or not is never concluded. There can only be one answer. If God himself appears before humanity. There is no way to disprove the existence of “God”. Therefore I would like people that try and debate in this thread t stop referring o whether god exists or not. As there is no way to prove either and ends in a pointless stalemate.
Below I have rearranged Macintosh’s quote so I can answer each individually by category.

Macintosh said:
Nobody can prove or disprove the existence of God - it's all about faith. My faith is no better or worse than the Jewish, Muslim, or atheist faith (or lack thereof).
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Agreed. Let us drop that point and move on. Atheist is a faith based on the belief there is no god. It is not correct to state it is a lack of faith. Lack of faith is to have no beliefs at all. Very important to distinguish between the two.
Macintosh said:
I pose the same question to you. I am a Christian and I would pit my education up against anybody's.
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The question is not a matter of your education but religions interference with in the education system has decreased general intelligence. The argument is not on a case that 100% of all religious people are uneducated but that the majority is shown to be ignorant of specific facts.

Science is a tool. It is morally neutral. As a tool, it describes how to breakdown observations into components to be explained. This knowledge is then used to create a formula to explain anything’s action or resultant based on the input. Religion has shown to propagate ignorance because science can prove things repeated by religious people in power. As a result you have a direct conflict between religion and science. Your intelligence is not in question, it’s your actions based on the information you have gathers is not always qualified when religion is involved.

Macintosh said:
I do not appreciate the inference that I am an uneducated, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal because I choose to have faith. Similarly, I will not regard you as such for embracing an ideology inconsistent with human nature.
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This is a generalization. The majority of religious people show high levels of ignorance in specific topics. Ignorance is bad in general, but everyone is ignorant. No one can claim they know everything; to do so is a lie. The level of ignorance is controlled by a society’s education system.

There is a very good reason why less religious people exist in academia in other nations. Religion can only exist to a certain point before facts show “old statements” made by religion to be false. Religion is nothing more than an old system of governing people’s lives, by setting rules that dictate how they live life for the better. America built of its success from the lack of religion in academia which has now slowed down to the interference of religion.

A prime example of this is CERN. The reason why America did not fund the project was not on the lack of technology or knowledge people would gain from it. It was the lack of religious value. As a result scientists then started stating we would like to perform the experiment to find the god partial. (“Higgs partical”). As a result America will know miss out on several base technologies that will now be used by European nations.

Please watch the following lectures given at TED. TED is an organizations that gather Nobel Prize winners and intellectuals that do nothing but question every action and reaction in every part of life.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/m...i_on_flow.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/b...of_choice.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/d...ous_memes.html
 
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Col. Flamestone said:
The fact is that a good number of people came to this nation in order to have religious freedom and as a result their descendents carry on the traditions with a wide variety of sects, particularly those of a Protestant orientation.
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Uh, learn a little American history before you spout off on a public forum where people who know a little about it might be hanging around.

The immigration to the Americas in the early 1600s, look up the Mayflower Compact, was about religious freedom. There weren't that many and few followed for religious reasons. The next influx to the colonies was for economic reasons in the mid 1600s after the Pilgrims had survived and established reasonably safe colonies. This lasted until around 1740's when there was another small influx, mostly from Scotland via northern Ireland where protestants were fleeing Catholic persecution. After the Revolutionary war, immigration was almost completely economic based.
 
Macintosh said:
Can you prove God, specifically the Christian God, does not exist? If not, then I wouldn't roam around the Internet claiming religious people are being deceived.



I pose the same question to you. I am a Christian and I would pit my education up against anybody's.

Nobody can prove or disprove the existence of God - it's all about faith. My faith is no better or worse than the Jewish, Muslim, or atheist faith (or lack thereof). I do not appreciate the inference that I am an uneducated, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal because I choose to have faith. Similarly, I will not regard you as such for embracing an ideology inconsistent with human nature.
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Even well educated people need/yearn for comfort. They/you are willing to suspend logic and reason in order to have it. That doesn't make you a knuckle dragging Neanderthal, just intellectually dishonest on that subject.
 
Slippery Slope said:
Even well educated people need/yearn for comfort. They/you are willing to suspend logic and reason in order to have it. That doesn't make you a knuckle dragging Neanderthal, just intellectually dishonest on that subject.
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So you're certain that God does not exist and that anyone who believes in God is suspending reason and logic. If you're certain of it, then you should be able to prove that God does not exist. Let's have it.
 
Macintosh said:
So you're certain that God does not exist and that anyone who believes in God is suspending reason and logic. If you're certain of it, then you should be able to prove that God does not exist. Let's have it.
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If you're as intelligent as you're trying to project then you know of course that one cannot prove a negative. Regardless I am not certain that god does not exist but rather, that there is no evidence to believe that he/she/it does exist. I do not believe in things for which there is no evidence.
 
A debate on whether God exists or not is never concluded. There can only be one answer. If God himself appears before humanity. There is no way to disprove the existence of “God”. Therefore I would like people that try and debate in this thread t stop referring o whether god exists or not. As there is no way to prove either and ends in a pointless stalemate.
Below I have rearranged Macintosh’s quote so I can answer each individually by category.
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Exactly. So why then do people make statements like the one I was replying to?

The question is not a matter of your education but religions interference with in the education system has decreased general intelligence. The argument is not on a case that 100% of all religious people are uneducated but that the majority is shown to be ignorant of specific facts.
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My education was in question with this statement, the one I was responding to: http://www.debatepolitics.com/1057787262-post37.html

This is a generalization. The majority of religious people show high levels of ignorance in specific topics.
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Link me up to these statistics, please.

There is a very good reason why less religious people exist in academia in other nations. Religion can only exist to a certain point before facts show “old statements” made by religion to be false. Religion is nothing more than an old system of governing people’s lives, by setting rules that dictate how they live life for the better. America built of its success from the lack of religion in academia which has now slowed down to the interference of religion.
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Rubbish.
 
Macintosh said:
So you're certain that God does not exist and that anyone who believes in God is suspending reason and logic. If you're certain of it, then you should be able to prove that God does not exist. Let's have it.
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If you must, for the plain simple logical fallacy of burdon of proof.
If I make a outrageous claim such as the universe is actuall a microcosmo within a different dimention that is hung around the neck of a giant species of a higher dimension, wouldn't you then demand that I prove it?
By the same rational, the default position is that there exists no such supernatural being and that the proof of existence of said being rests on those that make the claim of.
So, it's not the job of the disbeliever to provide the proof against, but the job of the believer to provide the proof for. Right now the argument is based on a negative proof. "There's no proof that god doesn't exist so who are you to say that he doesn't".
While true, there is no absolute certainty, and always there is a small probability that there may indeed be a god of somesort.
But that this "personal" god who speaks to us, has us as his favorite creation, has a plan for us, the possibility that that god exists is highly unlikely and dubious.
 
jfuh said:
If you must, for the plain simple logical fallacy of burdon of proof.
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When you claim that a person is, in so many words, foolish for believing in something, you have to show cause. The only way you can do that, seemingly, is, in this particular instance, prove that God does not exist.

If I make a outrageous claim such as the universe is actuall a microcosmo within a different dimention that is hung around the neck of a giant species of a higher dimension, wouldn't you then demand that I prove it?
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No.

By the same rational, the default position is that there exists no such supernatural being and that the proof of existence of said being rests on those that make the claim of.
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Why, specifically, is that the default position?

So, it's not the job of the disbeliever to provide the proof against, but the job of the believer to provide the proof for.
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It's your job to prove why I'm being fooled, since you make the claim.

Right now the argument is based on a negative proof. "There's no proof that god doesn't exist so who are you to say that he doesn't".
While true, there is no absolute certainty, and always there is a small probability that there may indeed be a god of somesort.
But that this "personal" god who speaks to us, has us as his favorite creation, has a plan for us, the possibility that that god exists is highly unlikely and dubious.
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Why is that?
 
Macintosh said:
When you claim that a person is, in so many words, foolish for believing in something, you have to show cause. The only way you can do that, seemingly, is, in this particular instance, prove that God does not exist.
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Macintosh said:
No.
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Wait a tic, you're telling me, that if I told you that our entire universe is simply incapsulated within a tiny ball around a giant's neck you wouldn't need any proof to believe that?
 
jfuh said:
Wait a tic, you're telling me, that if I told you that our entire universe is simply incapsulated within a tiny ball around a giant's neck you wouldn't need any proof to believe that?
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To believe that or to believe that you believe that? First of all, I don't think very much about our universe. But if you chose to believe that, I wouldn't say, "Oh, you're just an uneducated baboon who's being fooled." Why? 'cause I can't prove our universe is anything other than that.
 
Macintosh said:
To believe that or to believe that you believe that? First of all, I don't think very much about our universe. But if you chose to believe that, I wouldn't say, "Oh, you're just an uneducated baboon who's being fooled." Why? 'cause I can't prove our universe is anything other than that.
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You responded to parts, so first, the question is for you to share that belief.

As to the second part, you wouldn't see the belief as absurd? Even if it involved some bizzare ritualistic practices? Then to top it all off to insist that the principles of said belief to be instituted into law, shoved down the throats of everyone else because it's "the one true path".
 
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