DonRamsay

Never felt better, thanks for asking. Well, to be less than completely polite, feeling a little aggravated at your tone, but I'll get over it. That was not in question here, and I have no doubt that homo sapiens have had belief in supernaturals since they climbed down from the trees. Believing in Santa for more than 50 years has not made him any more or less unreal. True, I've been told that and accept that in all probability some of the Old Testament is meant to be fact and some fable and some parable. That always provokes the question as to what is which. And, anyhow, I was arguing not with you but with somebody who is utterly convinced that every word is literally true as the inspired word of his, the Jews and the Muslims GOD. On the contrary, we make no claim as to the veracity of the Bible other than to say it lacks provenance and therefore authority. On the contrary, there are plenty of things that I believe in. I believe that all mankind should have equal rights regardless of race, creed, nobility, etc. I believe that mankind is overwhelmingly made up of good and decent people. Pretty well anything that comes under the heading of ethics has more appeal to me than anything written in the Old Testament. I have a wonderful life that is not a dress rehearsal and I'm living every bit of it in the expectation that you only get one go at it and that the earned respect of people you admire is very important.

Evolution threatens radical fundamentalists like GG because it requires the Earth to be billions of years old. That conflicts with what GG believes is the inspired word of his God that the Earth is just a few thousand years old. Evolution could not work in that time frame. Scientific theory dates the Earth old enough for evolution to have had time to work. Therefore, fundamentalist christians must reject evolution because to accept it would be to accept that the Bible is wrong about how old the Earth is. And if Scientific theory is wrong about evolution, it must be wrong about all science. A fundamentalist's literal interpretation of the Bible and Science can not co-exist at the same time. So, fundamentalist christians like fundamentalist muslims and jews reject intelligent thought in favour of superstition and belief. That's their call and all I ask is to be free from the influences of such people. Tony Abbott can have his christian beliefs but he has no right to inflict them on people who want to get married just because it doesn't fit his particular religious beliefs. All religions argue for religious freedom. All atheists ask for is freedom from all religions. We no more want to be ruled by the fanciful beliefs of scientologists or Daoists, zoroatorists* than the fanciful beliefs of any of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic religions. *Zoroaster was a Persian prophet who at the age of 30 believed he had seen visions of God, whom he called Ahura Mazda.

"Belief" and "scientific theory" are polar opposites. Evolutions is a Scientific Theory based on testing evidence whereas religions are based on supposition and superstition. Grasp that fact and you will be on your way out of the darkness and into the brightness of enlightenment. Blatting on about Evolution being a belief system is something only you and a very few fundamentalist christians do whereas Scientific Method holds sway in the thinking part of the human race and guides the way the world operates. Believers are entitled to believe black is white but it is of no relevance to science and the real world. Governmental Atheism? Like the USA that has a constitution that frees the State from any interference from religion? Certainly not like the UK or Iran with their head of State also the Head of the State religion. The greatest crime ever committed against humanity would no doubt have been committed by Adolf Hitler a person of the Christian faith who was a strong supporter of christian churches and was, I believe, backed by the christian churches - particularly in regard to anti semitism. The difference between wars fought in defence of religion, or in aggression for religion (crusades) is that the whole point was religious supremacy. Murder of "infidels" and seizing their holy sites was the aim. Whereas wars and atrocities committed by atheists like Stalin were not done as pro-atheism or anti-religion they were just a ruthless grab for megalomaniacal power and has no relationship to their atheism. Stalin did not kill 20 million Russians because he disagreed with their religion, he killed them because he disagreed with their politics. The Gulags were not full of religious martyrs they were full of people who objected to the abuse of an economic theory to maintain dictatorial powers. If godless Communism set out to rid Russia of religion, it didn't try very hard and failed miserably. Their may have been pogroms against the Russian jews but they had pogroms under the Tsars as well who were devout christians. Russians just didn't like Jews. The Tsarists did Jews in because they didn't like the religion (and money lending debts) but the godless Communists did them in because they saw them as free enterprise advocates who were therefore a threat to the Communist revolution.

"mesmerised" is a little hyperbolic but they do have a ring to them. I sincerely doubt that. How would we know they were more accurate if we can't match their accuracy. How would we know they were right? That's not such a big deal even if achieved a very long time ago. Translating it into something I can read with confidence is a much greater achievement. Giving credit to those who came before us is something we do now but back then the goat herders borrowed from tradition with no crediting the source. No doubt they carried some fat prophets around the desert with them in circles for 40 years before they took up raping and pillaging in the land of milk and honey - but doesn't look like they had too many good navigators in their flock.

I was thinking that GG might be wetting his pants laughing as he baits people of reason with taunts from someone who has no regard for reason or evidence and prefers to believe something somebody told him. But, that clever tactic might involve overestimating his MPA (mental processing ability). The hypocrisy of asking for "counter arguments" is breathtaking in its lack of cogent thought. How do you argue against unsubstantiated assertions that are patent nonsense? That sort of rubbish deserves summary dismissal not counter arguments. I have lost count of the number of times GG has attempted to assign atheism to the status of a "belief". How brain dead do you have to be, how closed down does your mind have to be to not be able to see that gods exist only in the minds of people of faith? If there were real evidence for the existence of god(s) you would not need faith and there would be zero atheists. Why would a god create the human race and give people intelligence and require them to use that intelligence to physically survive and prosper but not to use it in connection with their creator? Why is it smart to query everything you are taught except the bit about gods? If our forbears had not questioned religious doctrine, we would have attempted to fly to the Moon believing that the Earth was stationary and the moon revolved around the Earth but was otherwise stationary. How would that have worked? When I was a child, if a Catholic ate meat on a Friday it was a mortal sin and you would burn in hell for all eternity. Then one day Christ's representative on Earth, reiterating the divine will said, "Nah, that's crap, it's OK to eat meat on Friday if you want to." Was the original rule put in place because JC and the majority of the disciples were Galilean fishermen and they were trying to boost fish sales on Fridays? GG - last time - have a look at the Oxford dictionary and you will see a Christian centric view of atheism as it defines an atheist as "A person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods". "Disbelieves and lacks belief" are quite different things. one is active the other passive. The word "lacks" is pejorative in the sense that something is missing. I wonder when they added the "or gods" (in lower case) at the end? I bet it was relatively recently. This Christian centric view is explained by the origins of Oxford as a christian college. A more correct, secular definition would be "a person who lives their life without reference to any form of religious doctrine". Whereas a religious person has a "belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods", an atheist is untroubled by such superstition. Superstition: "a widely held but irrational belief in supernatural influences". How is that different to Religion? There is one word that separates religion from superstition - "irrational". So, it is irrational to believe that walking under a ladder is bad luck but it is perfectly rational to believe that a man rose from the dead and 40 days later ascended into Heaven? There is some rational credence to not walking under a ladder but no substantiated evidence at all for even the existence of JC, let alone his crucifixion, let alone rising from the dead or ascending into heaven. GG, can you now see the fundamental difference between an atheist and a religious person. An atheist lives their life without reference to anything supernatural whereas a religious person lives their life based on a belief system. Atheists do not see themselves a believer that god(s) don't exist. It is not a religion it is living life without reference to religious doctrine a.k.a. superstition. Now, I guarantee that GG will not attempt to answer with "counter arguments" anything written above because, on past form, he lacks the capacity to do that, especially with his own words. Instead he'll just ignore all of the above or perhaps counter with some gems of inscrutable wisdom from the antiquities written by god only knows who and edited and translated with the accuracy of god only knows what.

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Have you never had an original thought? Can you only quote stuff written by goat herders several thousand years ago who knew nothing of the modern world and science? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are few things as individual as musical taste. I love jazz and I know plenty of people who would describe it as a group of people playing different tunes in different keys, badly. Some jazz deliberately includes dissonant notes. And don't get me started on "contemporary" music - the musical equivalent of "modern Art". And that's just the music . . . let's not forget that the lyrics in many songs are as or more important than the tune. But I did think Mr Phelps bore a striking resemblance to Jesus having blond hair and a red beard. Perhaps that's why the born agains like him so much. Not at all. Just dismissed it out of hand as totally ingenuous due to a committed christian posing as an atheist to pretend that an atheist was criticising atheism. I mean how lame is that? And surely not even ethical, honest or in any way "Christian". You should be ashamed that one of your mob was so underhanded, deceptive and devious. Looks like the sort of thing the devil would get up to. GG, you must have missed my criticism of Mark Hill and his eloquence. Oh, it would be too much fun to shoot down the rest of that drivel. But, I'll take a leaf out of your book and post somebody who has done a decent job on Mark Hill's mindless, baseless assertions. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/05/21/a-rebuttal-to-5-ways-the-atheist-community-is-hurting-itself/

Well I took the risk and read the link from GG's ridiculous post. It is a set of nasty statements by Mark Hill whose eloquence is marked by his first statement that Prof Richard Dawkins is an "a....hole". That is also a mark of his grip on logical argument. In response to the absolute drubbing his blog received, he responded "I was wondering how I could get more [hate mail] when I realized I've never written about religion." So, for his first effort at writing about religion he has clearly demonstrated he has zero credibility. GG must think Mark Hill is an atheist when in fact he is a bible thumper along with the best/worst of them. Once you look behind the one liners that GG posted you can appreciate the simple minds at work and not working very hard. Gnarly, if you can't do any better than quote nonsense from non-entities and morons, you'd be better to stay quiet - unless of course you *want* to make yourself seem silly and shallow. (note to mods: I did not say GG is silly and shallow . . . in case you thought I had)

Turbo, your reply above is one of the few occasions here when it is a pleasure to have the discussion and, yes, "argument". "Argument" enclosed in inverted commas here not because of a special meaning but to indicate the strict meaning of it being an exchange of views backed by logic and not the usual meaning these days of bickering - an angry exchange of "yes it is"versus "no it isn't". Thanks for that. There are still some fundamental issues with the entire Abrahamic (Judeo/Christian/Islamic) religion. It is not logic based, it is faith based. Their is zero useful provenance for the Judeo/Christian scriptures. The Islamic Kuran (however spelled) probably comes closest to a reputable historical document in that it has a claim of a single author and that the entire contents are the statements of the author. Even still, it is open to widely varying interpretation as is evidenced in the behaviours of muslims in the 21st Century. Clearly, you cannot an argument in that sense with anyone who forsakes reason in favour of an unquestioning belief that the Bible is the inspired word of an omnipotent deity. Total waste of time and energy on both sides. But, let's talk specifics in response to your reasoned criticism of my dissertation above. Like me you were probably Confirmed before achieving your teens and the age of independent reason. All I had to do was learn effectively the Creed of Nicaea adopted and enforced by Constantine in the 4th Century CE as the fundamental act of faith. Something tells me though that on the strength of your writings here, you would not be eligible for Confirmation in the 21st Century CE. Could even qualify as a heretic and blasphemer. Good thing Canon and Shariah Law are not in force in this jurisdiction, and that the Pharisees can't recommend to the Governor that you be crucified, eh? It's not the time scale I was disparaging but the tribe of desert wandering, genocidal people famous for the boastful rape of Jericho. These were superstitious people who destroyed what was perhaps the first city the world has known. All true but they were not necessarily of the tribe that assembled the old testament. The Romans had developed truly remarkable technology but, when it came to matters of religion, they were still looking at the entrails of chickens to make many of their important decisions. Still no question in my mind that the goat herders made "a mess of it". I only ever refer to it as a counter to an argument that was formulated on the basis of the content of the Bible or of its provenance. I don't think so. There may be some evidence that there was a flood of almost biblical proportions but it hardly lines up with the drivel written about Noah. How simple and ignorant would a people have to be to swallow that codswallop? Hardly an expression that belongs in our otherwise serious discussion and ignores the criticism " . . . who is qualified to be the judge of what is inspired word and what is parable and what is just of its time?". Even if it were true that "evidence of sections of the Bible indicate that some is very accurate, and some is rubbish, and some is not understood" still leaves us with the situation that who says which bit is what? Not sure in what sense you think they were not primitive. Biologically perhaps not much different though likely to have been shorter in stature and lacking the intellectual evolution that came with the intellectual giants like Socrates, daVinci, Newton, Einstein, etc. Compared to that lot, I feel primitive!

Oh my God! Wash your mouth out Turbo. How can you possibly say it is not the word of God when the Bible says it's the word of God! Of course many Christians have drawn a line under the old testament and rely only on the new testament and the muslims have drawn a line under both and said only what Muhammad said matters. And the many pagan religions have their own gods and care not for any scribblings by goat herders from several thousand years ago. And then there are our favourites, the Scientologists and their particular superstitions dreamed up post WWII. No atheist could give a tinker's damn about the Bible's content. However, there are many god-fearing christians who claim that the Bible *is* the inspired word of Jehovah aka Allah aka God. The creator of this thread, Mr Gnarly, is certainly one of those people and he even denies that Allah and Jehovah and God are the same. As such, surely it is fair game to quote this thread's creator's creator's inspired word to prove what a load of cobblers it all is. Those that claim some of the Bible is "Gospel" and some of it is not; and some of it is literal and some of it's parable; and some of it is just of its time and not relevant to today - they just want to have it all ways. And who is qualified to be the judge of what is inspired word and what is parable and what is just of its time? But this is all just simple logic and the last thing people who forsake reason for belief want to know about is logic. After all, are we not presumptuous in trying to understand the way in which God works? Should we not all just accept that he works in mysterious ways and believe that the church hierarchy can guide us to the truth, the light and the way? And, the superstitions of an uneducated primitive from 30,000 years ago is surely of no more interest than a curiosity?

Nobody on here except possibly the Gnarly one and a couple of his fellow believers think this planet Earth is any younger than several billion years old. But is is amusing, you have to admit, to poke fun at such hysterical fantasies. I would easily be persuaded that species from which we evolved (pre homo sapiens) believed that many natural phenomena (thunder, lightning, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, even rain) were due to the work or humour of spirits. But logical based on the scriptures and damn funny - and that after all is what this section is meant to be for - Laughter!

They became catholics?

I'd not seen that quote before but I've lived and will live my life on that premise - not to perfection but at least that's the intent.

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The local University Radio station (2NUR FM) has a session on around mid-day each week presented by a "Wellness" person. This person asserts all sorts of Alternative Medicine gibberish. I am quite critical of a University allowing this rubbish to go to air uncontested by the Medical Faculty. Being a grumpy old sod, I'll probably write to the FM station, the University Vice-Chancellor and the Medical Faculty and help them all with their thinking.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_who_became_creationists_after_studying_the_evidence

On a tangent for a moment, Bex, how's your aviation business going? Don

Just catching up and the standard of humour on this thread, I see, remains at a sensationally high level. I went off to check the score and this is what I found: Looks like confirmed religious now qualify as minorities and the non-religious as the majority - just have to get the politicians to recognise where the strength really lies. To me this spells nothing but good things for the future of our civilisation. Makes me wonder how long the ignorance and inbreeding can continue for followers of Islam before the penny drops that there really is a better way to live and die. https://richarddawkins.net/2015/04/global-survey-finds-63-of-worlds-population-is-religious-while-11-are-convinced-atheists-2/

Sorry Bex, I also have to disagree. The fact is we have the ordered society we have despite the efforts of religious zealots. We have so many laws that contradict the laws of the bible I would not like to count them all. We have a great society because we are an ethical society. In our democracy, what all people think matters not just the theocrats. Oddly, we actually live in a form of governments similar in principal to that of the Islamic State of Iran. We have as head of the State religion as our political autocrat. Sound like Iran? Because the majority of Australians (and the Brits for that matter) were unhappy with that form of government it exists only figuratively but, nominally that is still where we are - kowtowing to a bunch of inbred German nobles.

At the risk of losing your dinner - iirc they drink the water used for washing the body.

Stop it! You'll all go blind.

Clearly, Turbs, you have not been reading the assertions of the gnarly one who claims it is the irrefutable (inspired) words of God. Not my personal view of course but that has been what the argument started out about. Definitely not fair to dump on the venerable hunter of facts.

Marty, we did that and a lot more in 2007. Unfortunately, I picked up a very unsavoury respiratory bug in Beijing and I needed intravenous antibiotics during the Yangtze cruise. Worked very well and I went from death's door (no exaggeration) to fully recovered very quickly. When we got back to Aus, we read about the antibiotics scandal! Moral is, take Aussie antibiotics with you and of course only use them under medical supervision. Things may have improved on the pharmaceuticals front but wise always to travel with quality antibiotics. I was treated by a local Doctor on the cruise and he was 1st class.