I think you're remembering wrong on that one.

He won't read anything on this board, so it doesn't matter haha.

Pray to whatever invisible sky God ya want, it won't help anyone. How can I push religious beliefs on anyone when I'm not religious?

Odd statement.

If I was born as dumb and ugly as you, I might believe there is no god also. Prayers to you Codester.

I'm younger, smarter and more successful than you.

Even if you're better looking that don't pay the bills, lol. Pray to your invisible God back cracker!

Being the 369th ranked raquetball player in the USA is not what most define as success.

This is sad news. Hope he comes out ok. Always wanted us to pick up the ASU kid from draft day to every time he was a FA.

MY GOD HOPE AND PRAYS

Scary as hell to think he’s catching a TD pass one second and now doctors are fighting to save his leg.

Prayers to him.

You're totally right. Macedonians revered bulls, Kept imagining that palace they found recently. Minoans got a little deeper- so to speak.



True he will not read this board but we are all connected on this earth man. A human's receptiveness of thoughts and emotions can be transmitted. In no way are we to believe that our contribution to the good can be quantified in numbers- but the intent is everything, Cody. google "smile for a minute" and google "mirroring". You can internalize a feeling, externalize it, and pass it on through the process of mirroring. Fascinating science stuff.

Cody atheism is a religion. It has all the hallmarks of a religion, you guys do religious things like

You have a belief- there is no God
You have a book- The Origin of Species or any science book but its always changing. Are we doing string theory, particle theory, how many universes or planes of existence are we up to? Isn't this just a hyper-real virtual reality? Same questions that you have about the Bible, Koran, Torah, or any other religious tome
You have your version of saints- O'Hair and others who have brought visibility to your religion
A version of a messiah- Netichze or pick from any other of a list of people
You have organized and set up chapters that accept money under the 501 (c) (3) designation reserved for primarily for religious groups
You have had issues with people stealing funds meant to further your cause- Ohair.
Atheists (state-sponsored ones) have persecuted those not following atheism or their version of atheism- Dogma I think they call it

You have assholes who look down on others because they don't believe as you do.

Cody, once I understood that there is something larger than me in this world- my life got easier. And once I realized that there is a force that is on my side and I could do anything as long as I asked, followed the "golden rule", and had faith- my life got fun. I went from working 2 full-time jobs to owning a business that has access to billions in capital. I did not luck into it, God didn't just give it to me, he showed me what was possible and I had faith to believe that it could happen. I never gained much by my belief solely in myself.

People who use their religion (atheists included) as comfort and never step out on faith are very hard people to be around. Because they can never get beyond themselves. Some of the smartest people I knew in college were atheists- most of them are still there 20 years later. Never had faith to do anything with those smarts.
Saying, God doesn't exist means you've never stepped out in faith on anything huge and scary. Meantime I am going to add all the positivity and faith I can to the world, what could it hurt?

Veritas,

I just spent some time on Crete and did a tour of Knossos (the most famous Minoan palace). They revered the bull but I'm quite sure it didn't involve having sex with them. They vaulted over bulls kinda like the ancient version of the gymnastic events. It's also where the ancient myth of the Minotaur came from. Still, no sex involved.

I guess they read a little more into this painting than what was actually going on

I don't think intercourse with bulls was part of Minoan religious practice.

Religious theology depends on divinely revealed principles from which it uses reason to make demonstrations.

Science and philosophy depend on rationally (human) grounded principles from which they use reason to make demonstrations, the former exclusively relying on observation and experience, the latter on both experience and deductive reasoning.

So, Veritas, you are wrong that atheism is a religion if atheism does not rely on divinely inspired first principles.

You cannot test divinely revealed principles, either by reason or experimentation, and this is the source of the requirement of faith for religion.

Atheism requires that one be persuaded by reason, but persuasion is not the same as faith.

Yeah RS gave me the site research on that. Something I read tried to legitimize the minotaur myth without bringing aliens into the mix. My discourse was to show that atheism falls into the same traps as organized religion thus could be considered one. What holds it back from achieving true theological gains is its lack of faith in anything outside of themselves and science fact of today.

Atheism is a world view. The only "requirement" to be a believer is to believe it.

Same could be said about any religion at first. Humans have a basic need to complicate things in order to legitimize them.

Atheism, at least if you take the word literally (no god), requires one to believe in the absence of something (god). To hold with any degree of conviction a worldview that hinges on the absence of a thing…in all of space and time…is to hold a worldview the basic premise of which cannot be proven by observation and experience. Atheists—at least as much as any world religion—hold an “I believe this because I believe this” position. One cannot have sufficient observation and experience to conclude that a thing does not exist, since observation and experience cannot account for the part(s) of the universe that exist outside of one’s scope of observation and experience. Agnosticism, leaning toward atheism, is much more credible.

Atheism says, “there is no God.” Agnosticism says, “I don’t know, but I don’t think there is a God.”

I believe there is a God. And I have mentioned Zach Miller to Him several times in the last day or so.

Atheism as a "belief system" wouldn't exist if it weren't for religion.

The 501 (c) (3) designation is for non profits, specifically those that are considered public charities, private foundations or private operating foundations. Not strictly religious organizations.

Also, Saying atheists have saints is an oxymoron.

saint
sānt/Submit
noun
1.
a person acknowledged as holy or virtuous and typically regarded as being in heaven after death.
2.
used in titles of religious saints.

Yes. And?

Belief requires persuasion and persuasion is only present in rational beings.

And because atheism and religiosity are arguably both "world views" (an uninstructive phrase), calling atheism a world view hardly distinguishes it from religion.

But I do not think belief and faith are the same thing. See the distinction I drew in my post. Revealed principles are not rational principles because they are not derived from reason. Embracing them is what faith is. If you like, faith belongs to the genus belief. The species difference is that faith is grounded in the revealed word of the divine. Not so science or philosophy which embraces principles derived from human reason. Such principles admit of demonstration. Not so with the revealed word of god.

It is not possible to hold a belief without having been persuaded to it and to be persuaded is an act of reason. Is faith an act of reason or...faith. I think there is real difference here.

My aim is not to belittle religion but point out what makes it special. I think Cody's comments are silly and I am hardly religious.

It's not only about what can and cannot be proved. It's about the nature of the principles.

You are right that the atheist is in no position to demonstrate that there is no god. But the atheist is someone who refuses to embrace principles that are not derived from human reason. The atheist has belief, not faith. Those who wish to reduce faith to belief do not do religion any favors.

Indeed. Hebrews 10 (and I paraphrase) says, “we hold fast the faith, because He is faithful who promised.” So, as you say, the faith rests not on the empirical evidence, but on the “faithfulness” of the “promiser.”