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Old 01-31-2012, 08:49 AM   #126
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Right, I'm leaving this thread on grounds of everyone seems to have very calmly ignored me bringing up the nature of god and explaining perhaps why evidence has not/perhaps never will come to light either way. As a general rule religion exists. A healthy interest in it from any perspective is useful in so far as it will help you understand people. To insult someone's intelligence because they are theist is to do them a great injustice. To say science and religion utterly cancel each other out is also incorrect. I value an Empirical system, but I also believe in the existence of being a higher power.
Why do you believe in this higher power? Is there an actual good excuse you have? Something you've experienced or seen that draws you to this truth? Or do you just believe because you want something that makes you feel good? Have you ever noticed that when someone believes in a god, it's almost always a god that's somehow "good"?

Can you imagine how horrible it would be if there was a god that could be concluded to absolutely exists that revels in the horror and torment of all creation?

What if this higher power was something you could not in any justifiable way be anything you'd ever like? What if this gnosis of god gave you no comfort? What if it gave you nothing but stark terror and for good reason because you saw your friends, family, and loved ones spontaneously be eviscerated, miraculously tortured, and divinely *****?

No one seems to ever come to such a conclusion about the nature of a divine creator. Do you ever wonder why that is? Have you ever thought for just a second that the reason you believe in a higher power is simply because it's psychologically consoling to you? Has it ever occurred to you that your god is nothing more than a coping mechanism? I'm not leveling this at you in a negative way. I'm just saying. What's more likely? Is god actually REAL or is your belief in god simply a psychological trick of the light?
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Old 01-31-2012, 09:02 AM   #127
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The Westboro Baptists BELIEVE.
To be fair they don't really seem like believers so much as sociopath, attention whoring trolls, not that it makes anything better or anything or takes away from the other examples but I figured that if we are going to talk about truth then a more accurate psychological profile of WBC would be a good idea.
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Old 01-31-2012, 09:08 AM   #128
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To be fair they don't really seem like believers so much as sociopath, attention whoring trolls, not that it makes anything better or anything or takes away from the other examples but I figured that if we are going to talk about truth then a more accurate psychological profile of WBC would be a good idea.
Bullshit. They believe. Who are you to say they don't? What makes you think that they actually DO NOT BELIEVE in the message of their god? Please, Solumnia... please please please do not employ the "no true scotsman" fallacy.
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Old 01-31-2012, 10:14 AM   #129
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There are religious people out there who hold the beliefs that WBC profess to have and there are those who use some of the same tactics, I'm not saying that no true believe would do any of the things that they do, simply that in the case of WBC their motivation doesn't seem to be faith. Same can be said for most of the guys on the 700 club, clearly they care about money, money, their own ego, and maybe a little bit about Jesus but mostly money, in that case though their massive congregations do believe.
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Old 01-31-2012, 10:58 AM   #130
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So basically what you're saying is that their thesis is:

I don't REALLY believe this stuff, but I believe that this belief can be used as a weapon against those that I hate.

That's actually a perfectly good reason why we SHOULD create problems for religious belief and challenge it critically. Imagine how effective bigots such as WBC would actually be if they didn't have religion to wield as a weapon against the masses?

It's kind of hard for any rational person to take hate speech seriously if there's no window dressing for it. However, I'm thinking it's ad hominem to say the WBC don't believe because they're rich or privileged.
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Old 01-31-2012, 12:43 PM   #131
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the bible is not a fairy tale, but your eyes are to closed to see the truth, maybe one day you will fill that void inside of you by letting Jesus come in then you will have peace, and only desire simpler things, and be satisfied with less. I only wish you would see the truth.
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Old 01-31-2012, 12:51 PM   #132
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This thread is officially dead. Pothead is our own personal Godwin's Law.
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Old 01-31-2012, 02:01 PM   #133
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So basically what you're saying is that their thesis is:

I don't REALLY believe this stuff, but I believe that this belief can be used as a weapon against those that I hate.
No. I'm saying that they are behaving in real life the way that trolls do on the internet. To them success isn't converting people to their side, it is creating as much upheaval and chaos as possible while receiving lots and lots of attention. They get pleasure out of manipulating people and they have found an incredibly successful way to do it.

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That's actually a perfectly good reason why we SHOULD create problems for religious belief and challenge it critically.
I agree, the most dangerous thing about religion is how open it leaves people for manipulation and how easily it can be used to make the most horrific things seem not only like a good idea but as though they are of vital importance.

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However, I'm thinking it's ad hominem to say the WBC don't believe because they're rich or privileged.
My reasoning isn't that they don't believe because they are rich or privileged, that would be pretty shitty and pretty dumb of me. I came to that conclusion by really looking at their actions and analyzing the various choices that they have made and they don't follow what one could expect for a group trying to convince people that they are right or what would be typical of people trying to rally those who agree with them.
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Old 01-31-2012, 04:27 PM   #134
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Not believing is NOT a choice. Not believing is a default state of mind. If you put an infant in a vacuum and can observe what they believe, you will conclude they have no beliefs until experience is exerted on them. Then. Due to their dualistic mindset, they will draw irrational conclusions about their experiences because they're trying to understand an experience to the best of their ability. Seeing a phenomena and saying "I don't know what caused that particular thing yet, therefore there's no use in assuming an agency based on what I'm feeling." is understandably an educated approach that I will admit a person has to learn. I can't choose to NOT believe. I can only assume I know something when I don't which leads to a positive belief. Again, I can't prove Vishnu doesn't exist, but there's no evidence supporting that existence so I have no choice but to not believe until evidence is produced.
You are not an infant in a vacuum.

By your very example, you are proving that you CHOOSE to disbelieve. Unlike the infant, you have been exposed to the concepts of God and refuse to acknowledge them for your own personal BELIEF of how the world operates. Instead of being influenced by opinion, including your own, you choose to wait and have science answer it for you, if science ever can. You have proven that your disbelief is a CHOICE by listing all the reasons you DISBELIEVE in God.

The only way your argument would hold up in this example, is if you were an islander or tribesmen who had somehow never been exposed to the concept of God in any way shape or form.

I'm not angry about anything Ashley. It doesn't matter to me what you choose to believe, or how you choose to ridicule those who disagree with your world view.

The only thing that bothers me is that you insist on everyone viewing the world through your glasses. That is not free thought, that is dictatorship.
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Old 01-31-2012, 04:33 PM   #135
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You are not born believing in god. You are not born believing in something. You are born a blank slate, with no positive assumptions.
Thus, when you're born, you're an atheist. And the fact that you can't understand this makes you an idiot.
I'm an atheist because I stopped believing in God, but my cousin is an atheist because he did not grow up with the concept of god or divinity. Are you going to tell my cousin he's not really an atheist? Do you know him better than himself?
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Old 01-31-2012, 04:54 PM   #136
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You are not an infant in a vacuum.
I stopped paying attention for the most part when you said this. You clearly don't understand atheism or what it means to start out as a blank slate and then returning to that blank slate after looking at the world through a critical lens.

What you're trying to do is say that my lack of belief is somehow on equal footing with those that assert beliefs. This isn't true. You're demanding that I have to have a reason to not believe when it's not a choice. I have no reason to believe otherwise.

Holy SHIT I wish believers believed in god like you do. At least then we might not have anyone cutting off each others heads for being a sinful homosexual. But as it stands, deism is in rare commodity.

Christ, it's like you don't understand the concept of 0 or empty.
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Old 01-31-2012, 06:35 PM   #137
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Some primitive culture's don't. Deviant is clearly intellectually deficient.
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Old 01-31-2012, 06:37 PM   #138
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You are not born believing in god. You are not born believing in something. You are born a blank slate, with no positive assumptions.
Thus, when you're born, you're an atheist. And the fact that you can't understand this makes you an idiot.
I'm an atheist because I stopped believing in God, but my cousin is an atheist because he did not grow up with the concept of god or divinity. Are you going to tell my cousin he's not really an atheist? Do you know him better than himself?
No one knows what exists in an infant's mind when it is born. Your blank slate theory is nothing more than a theory. There is no scientific fact to back up your statement. No one has ever been able to find a way to communicate with an infant to know what, if anything, it believes, or understands.

Psychology is theory, it is not fact. There is no hard physical evidence to support that psychology is anything more than theory. It is nothing more than a set of principles established less than 200 years ago, that everyone has accepted as fact, until someone else comes along with their own theories and hypotheses, to update the code.

You consistently use misunderstanding of atheism as your scapegoat to sell your theories as fact, when atheism, by your own definition and example, is different for everybody who claims to be an atheist. You consistently use the same tactic to sell your theories of Marxism as fact. This is commonly known, in laymen's terms, as the "wet noodle" approach. A "wet noodle" is something that can never be caught or cornered, therefore it can never be proven wrong.
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Old 01-31-2012, 07:11 PM   #139
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Hilarious, seeing how you're the one who keeps bitching about how 'we can't actually prove you wrong'.
You projecting yourself little buddy?
You wanna confess something?

I think you're running out of ideas. It's ok. You can cry if you want. It's not like it would be any weaker than any of the attempts at rhetoric you have tried so far.
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Old 01-31-2012, 07:27 PM   #140
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Hilarious, seeing how you're the one who keeps bitching about how 'we can't actually prove you wrong'.
You projecting yourself little buddy?
You wanna confess something?

I think you're running out of ideas. It's ok. You can cry if you want. It's not like it would be any weaker than any of the attempts at rhetoric you have tried so far.
I'm not projecting anything. I'm trying to understand how you justify selling theory as fact.

I think you're the one who is getting angry because your approach is failing, so instead of providing facts, you provide theories and when your theories don't hold up you resort to belittlement. That's not a mature way of debating anything.

I'm not resorting to belittlement. I think you're a very intelligent person. I just don't accept your theories as fact. So I'm waiting for you to provide facts to back up your theories.
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Old 01-31-2012, 08:13 PM   #141
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To be fair they don't really seem like believers so much as sociopath, attention whoring trolls, not that it makes anything better or anything or takes away from the other examples but I figured that if we are going to talk about truth then a more accurate psychological profile of WBC would be a good idea.
I think sociopath is a valid assessment. It all stems from the father of that group who was definitely a sociopathic control freak who instilled fear in his family and used constant belittlement and violence to maintain his control. There is a documentary on the whole Phelps family and the origins of WBC. Pretty disturbing shit, but also very informative. I can't remember the exact name, but I watched it on Netflix a year or so ago. There are at least 2 family members who escaped - literally escaped - and no longer have ties with the rest of the family. They refuse to be interviewed on camera because they don't want their identities associated with WBC. From memory, at least one of those members did do a phone interview. The rest of the family, of course, denies their claims and accuses them of being possessed by the devil, or some shit. The entire city has tried repeatedly to run them out of town and disband their church but have legally been unsuccessful.
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Old 01-31-2012, 08:22 PM   #142
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Psychology is theory, it is not fact. There is no hard physical evidence to support that psychology is anything more than theory.
The fuck? You do realize that it is an actual science, right? Full of scientific inquiry and rigor? We can map the mother fucking brain, we can alter brain chemistry to produce tons of different results. Yes, psychology is a relatively young science and there are theories but no science is pure fact they all have things that are theories (like, you know, gravity) that also doesn't make those things meaningless, a scientific theory isn't just any idea that someone came up with that sounds kind of good.

Also it is the wrong fucking science for you to be criticizing here you want neurotheology, which has actually found some pretty interesting things. The whole god helmet thing really gave some interesting insight into religious experiences, not because the apparatus works (the findings were unable to be replicated) but because even though the damn thing didn't seem to work people still had very intense experiences, some people even met god. The subjectability of the human brain is a fascinating thing, made all the more fascinating by how fervently we believe that our own memories and perceptions are true and accurate.
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Old 01-31-2012, 09:12 PM   #143
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Also it is the wrong fucking science for you to be criticizing here
How am I criticizing Psychology? I said that it is theory, not fact, and everything you just said backs up my statement.

And building on what you just stated, how is it logical to criticize a belief in God, but not criticize atheism, when both are subject to the same light?

That is the very definition of bigotry.
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Old 01-31-2012, 10:52 PM   #144
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Solumina, he does not understand the concept of science. We should all just let it go.
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Old 01-31-2012, 10:54 PM   #145
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Solumina, he does not understand the concept of science. We should all just let it go.
WOW.
you really will stoop to anything to prove you're correct.
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Old 01-31-2012, 11:01 PM   #146
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You're the one who declared a whole field of science unsupported because you got nothing intelligent to say about it.
I'm done with you.
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Old 02-01-2012, 12:29 AM   #147
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You're the one who declared a whole field of science unsupported because you got nothing intelligent to say about it.
I'm done with you.
I never said or declared that it was unsupported. That is YOU putting words in my mouth, again.

If that is what I intended to say, then that is what I would have said.

All I said is that it is theory. I assumed you were smart enough to understand the difference between a theory and a fact. IF it were fact, then everybody would respond to exactly the same methods and treatments in exactly the same way, repeatedly.

Your blank slate theory, which is a scientific theory, is not fact. So Until and unless, it can be proven to be a fact, and not just a theory, you can't use it as proof of anything, any more than I can use my own theories as proof of anything.

2+2 will always equal 4. It can never equal anything other than 4.

If my crude analogies and summaries offend you, then that is your issue, not mine. Facts are facts. Theories are not facts, no matter how educated they are, or how much of a temper tantrum you, or anybody else, want to throw about it. Once a theory can be proven and repeated through trial and error, then and only then does it become fact.

Perhaps it is you who doesn't truly understand what science is.
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Old 02-01-2012, 06:56 AM   #148
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No one knows what exists in an infant's mind when it is born. Your blank slate theory is nothing more than a theory. There is no scientific fact to back up your statement. No one has ever been able to find a way to communicate with an infant to know what, if anything, it believes, or understands.
...Do you realize that a mind cannot conjure up ideas without external stimuli? Babies aren't born with a concept of language to even entertain the concepts of dualism or monism. They can't even begin to think in any meaningful way because they have no concept of expression. They are only born with the CAPACITY to learn language. Since that's the case, believers are NOT born, they are MADE. You have to learn this shit, bro. You have to learn a concept of god and to do that you have to learn or invent a means of language that's conveyable. Babies can't do that from the get go.

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Psychology is theory, it is not fact. There is no hard physical evidence to support that psychology is anything more than theory. It is nothing more than a set of principles established less than 200 years ago, that everyone has accepted as fact, until someone else comes along with their own theories and hypotheses, to update the code.
Exactly. Psychology is not just hypotheses. Theory is NOT an educated guess, it is a method of understanding, it is exercise of demonstrating facts. A hypotheses is an educated guess or a statement of observation that one must test. When the tests prove the hypotheses, the actual exercise of demonstrating these guesses is the theory.

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You consistently use misunderstanding of atheism as your scapegoat to sell your theories as fact, when atheism, by your own definition and example, is different for everybody who claims to be an atheist.
I seriously can't think of one atheist that would disagree with what Alan is talking about. Not a one. And I know a shitload of atheists.

If you want something that IS a fact and would cook your noodle, there are certain kinds of things that can happen to the brain that would significantly alter one's own personality, thoughts, and religion, and belief. I could actually get a kind of brain damage that would cause me to observe something and instead of thinking critically, I would become a believer because I wouldn't be able to explain it. What this means is that the concepts of the supernatural are entirely psychological and not a matter of real external agency.
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Old 02-01-2012, 07:16 AM   #149
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I never said or declared that it was unsupported. That is YOU putting words in my mouth, again.
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There is no hard physical evidence to support that psychology is anything more than theory.

The theory of gravity is also a 'nothing more than a theory'. Go jump a fucking bride and tell us if it's unsupported.
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Old 02-02-2012, 02:50 AM   #150
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You deliberately miss the point. Which is not surprising.

Give me one hard solid fact that proves psychology is more than theory. Please, so that you can show just how dumb I am.
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