₦airaland Forum

Is water transparent? Is darkness blackish? Is snow whitish?

2cato: Bigurban were ar u to come and defend ur self.
Apatheist and ur gang of confusion una see una self.

Dude, lighten up, will you? You can always post a counter joke, you know?

DandeNumeruno: Raymcblue, please when will the 2nd season return?

January 2015. Keep it locked in.

Bratking: Q: How many atheists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to actually change the bulb, and the other to videotape the job so fundamentalists won’t claim that god did it.

I got a better one:

Q. How many Christians does it take to change a light bulb?

A. Three, but they're really one.

Fear Factor (US) Season 4. The length people can go for money is unbelievable. This show will make you clinge.

Sorry, but the optical illusion didn't work on me. I saw all the 6 F's at the first attempt. I didn't even have to search for long. Maybe it's because I'm no stranger to optical illusions or simply a statement of fact: that I'm a freaking genius.

It's TV series BTW or "TV show", not movie. It can only be called a "Movie" when Hollywood or any other movie industry is heavily involved in it's production, airing and distribution. That is not the case in this regard, hence the name, TV show (A programme solely produced and aired on weekly basis by a Television terrestrial network or PayTV for the sole purpose of profit). ¿Comprénde ?

Engaging in arguments with a brick wall is counter productive and time consuming. Adios.

^^@tbaba12345

You have failed to provide solid arguments backing up your assertions that God deserve a special treatment in the universe. And your stand on morality is a joke.

Isn't it odd that God, unlike everything else in our universe, has been put into a special category? When we talk about God, we are supposed to do so "philosophically." Why? Why not treat God just like all other objects and devise experiments to detect his presence or absence?

The classic religious response is, "God must remain hidden. If he proved his existence, that would take away faith." This is clever - here we have an object named God that proves its existence by completely hiding its
existence.

Yeah, right... makes perfect sense. You must be very proud.

logicboy01: ^^^

I said it before that Tbaba makes ridiculous claims.

The guy copies arguments fro Hamza Tzortzis, Andalusi and co.


This is why his arguments on morality are half baked. Because his mentors are also half baked.


God is not necessary for there to be objective morality. That is an inescapable reality; 1 + 1 in mathematics is always 2 whether or not God exists.


If I see a child on the road, killing the child would be wrong whether or not God exists.

The simple truth. Morality isn't subjective or democratic. It doesn't need belief in "God" to make it work, period.

tbaba12345: Lol, OMG!! Off topic and irrelevant.

You have moved to deduction... Like I said, you do not seem understand these things.

You have not made deductions, you have applied simple rational reasoning same thing you apply everyday in your life.

If you applied INDUCTION, which is the basis of science in everything in your life, you will not believe most things.

Same with philosophical deductions.

The standards of truths and beliefs in your lives are not held up to these standards. You apply just simple reasoning daily to arrive at truths.

Then you have special standards for God.

Please if you must reply, understand first.

^^You seemed confused.

Before we can go any further, please elaborate further on your assertion that "God does not need empirical validation." It would go a long way in clearing up the smoke screen you're deliberately propagating.

Hardly discernable, unless you know what to look out for. I bet that plane at the top of the Troy's pic flew by super fast, cuz I've watched that particular scene several times and didn't notice anything. Whomever discovered all this, did so by pure chance.
---------------

Good one Op, this thread is worthy of front page. The hard work and dedication put into this shouldn't be allowed to go to waste.
----------------

*Edited* It just made front page.

tbaba12345: Debunked what exactly what scientific test did you carry out to determine this??

The reason, you know you have a great great great great great great great-grandpa is simple rational thinking plus testimony ("The Y chromosome" (also called Y-DNA) is passed with little "mutations" from father to son).


Proving my point again.



Debunked what

Basing it on Physical traits is purely out of rational reasoning... You just reasoned. The knowledge to do that is from testimony. You did not carry out tests.. You just keep helping me prove my point inadvertently

You did no science here

Most people have never done DNA tests including you atheists and still believe their mother is their mother from purely rational reasoning..



That is all testimony, someone drew a map and told you this is china, and also gave you coordinates... All you have is testimony, consistent testimony not science.

Your arguments above did nothing but assisted me in showing the flaws in your assertions in gleaming clarity.

Rational deduction without scientific proof is pure "fallacious" in grand scale. Imagine that we have a conversation one day and I say to you, "I believe in the Katopt. You cannot prove that the kapopt does not exist, therefore it exists." You can see that this is ridiculous. Just because I have invented something out of thin air does not mean that its non-existence is suddenly unprovable. There has to be some scientific evidence that the katopt exists in order to assert its existence. Since there is not, it is quite easy to say that the katopt is imaginary. Your assertion is borne more out of sentiments than hard logic. No empirical evidence.

Rational deduction backed up with scientific proof is irrefutable "fact." With every other object and phenomenon in our experience, we use the scientific method to determine whether it exists or not. For example, X rays are invisible, but we know that they exist. We can devise scientific experiments to prove that they exist, just like one can utilize DNA testing to determine the legitimacy of their ancestry or bloodline.

tbaba12345: It has a scope and it is limited, It is pure ignorance to deny it. my friend..

Some Limitations:

i. Sensory perception: Statements that can not be checked by observation lie outside the scientific method. questions such as does God exist? and is there a soul?, subjective conscious experience, are outside the realm of the scientific method.

ii. Time: Science cannot explain the past or the origins of things. eg what was before the Big Bang? and how did the first living cell emerge? are technically outside the realm of the scientific method.

iii. Morality: Science is amoral.


It is obvious from what you have written that you do not know the differences between testimony, rational reasoning and actual science.

The truth is that, there are no rebuttals for what i wrote , it is just the facts.

Notice what happens when anyone is "miraculously cured". A person is sick, the person prays (or a prayer circle prays for the person) and the person is cured. A theist looks at it and says, "God performed a miracle because of prayer!" That is the end of it.

A scientist looks at it in a very different way. A scientist looks at it and says, "Prayer had nothing to do with it, there is a natural cause for what we see here. If we understand the natural cause, then we can heal many more people suffering from the same condition."

In other words, it is only by assuming that the belief in prayer is a superstition and therefore God is imaginary that science can proceed.

For example: Fleming worked with mold for some time, but refining and growing it was a difficult process better suited to a chemist. The work was taken over by a team of chemists and mold specialists, but was cut short when several of them died or relocated.

Did Fleming say, as a religious person would, "The death of this bacteria is a miracle! God has reached down and killed it in response to our prayers!" Of course not. Instead, they completely ignored "God" and understood that the belief in prayer is a superstition. They determined what was actually happening through experimentation and then made useful medicines from the mold. They took a rational approach rather than a religious approach and we all benefit from penicillin and its many derivatives today.

All of science works in this way. Only by assuming that
God is imaginary and prayer is meaningless can science
proceed.

You're right about one thing though, science is amoral. It transcends morality.

tbaba12345: Example:1. If you go back 8 generations, you must have had a great, great, great.... grandfather. Scientifically, you can't prove that. You don't have his DNA, you don't know where his grave is, you don't know where his clothes are.

You have nothing, the only way, you can conclude that he existed is by basic rational thinking. Not by scientific evidence.

I don't need a DNA sample to know that I have an ancestor because of one simple fact: "The Y chromosome" (also called Y-DNA) is passed with little "mutations" from father to son, just like (in most cases) a surname. It is these mutations that begin distinct branches and let genealogists find people with recent common ancestors. So Great great great great great great great great-grandpa should have the same "Y-DNA" as his son, his son’s son and so on. As for where he was buried... who cares? Debunked.

tbaba12345: 2. If you believe that your mother is your mother, this belief is based upon testimony. Testimony of father, midwife etc. However, you do not have any scientific evidence that she is your mother. Right now, you believe she is your mother without any scientific test, yet you hold it as truth.

It goes beyond that, my friend. Introducing the phrase: "Like mother like son", there are physical traits and characteristics passed from mother to child through the genes that are easily observable:

-Dimple
-Handedness
-Earlobe
-Eye Color
-Mannerism

Some "physical traits" are passed on only through the mother or only through the father. Others are passed on depending on what traits are strongest between the parents, whether they be "dominant traits" or just more "prevalent" within the family.

In the event the child doesn't exhibit the physical traits/characteristics, science can easily resolve this issue by the method known as "DNA Testing." Debunked.

tbaba12345: 3. If you have never been to China, the only reason, you believe there is a place called china is as a result of consistent testimony.

I know there is a geographical location known as China because thanks to science, I can actually watch her on TV, listen to CCTV on my radio, and learn "Mandarin" using a phone app. I can even pinpoint her exact location on the "World map", or plot her coordinates. Debunked.

tbaba12345: The point is this: Science is a fantastic but limited method and should be applied only when it is applicable.

Limited?? Science is anything but limited, friend. Science is infinite with endless possibilities. Science examines, calculates and then proposes. Science is "cold hard logic."

mazaje: God is always their default position for "I don't know". . .If god exist then there should be direct and objective evidence for his existence simple. . .lets assume that god exist, he has this special message he wants to share with the whole of humanity and the best he can do is to send the message for an arabic man in arabic to cram and recite to other humans?. . .Even humans will not do this. .Humans will not employ this failed and ludicrous system .If the President of Nigerian for example has a special message for all Nigerians and wants to send the message to all of Nigerians he appears on TV and speaks the English which is the common and official language of the country. . .He will not appear to one obscured man in Benue state speak to him in Tiv and tell him to share the message to all Nigerians. . .Extra ordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence, you can not make extra ordinary claims and then produce extremely weak evidence or non evidence for your claims.

Well said. Yet, if you talk to the theists, they ignore all of this evidence. So what might motivate theists to ignore the strong evidence that God is imaginary? Here are 3 possibilities:

-Theists might choose to believe that God is answering their prayers, despite the evidence that "answered prayers" are nothing more than coincidences, because it is a huge boost to the ego. This explanation works both for big "miracles" and small ones. Imagine this: Imagine that you have cancer, you pray to God for a cure, you undergo surgery and chemotherapy, and the cancer does go into remission. What cured you? The surgery and chemo: all evidence indicates that this is the case. If God was going to cure you, you would have been able to skip the surgery and chemo, right? Yet, as a theist, it is a huge ego boost to believe that the all-powerful creator of the universe cured you. It means he has "big plans" for the rest of your life.

-Theists might choose to believe that God is answering their prayers, despite the evidence that "answered prayers" are nothing more than coincidences, because they are afraid of being alone. They need an invisible friend to talk to in order to cope with lonliness, and God is the "community sanctioned" invisible friend that is accepted in our society. It may be that, for millions of people, an invisible friend is the only way they can cope with being alone. In order to make this invisible friend seem more real, it may help the illusion if you believe that he hears and answers prayers.

-When we are born, we instinctively have a place in our brains for an "all-knowing, all-loving being". When we are young this being is called a parent, and children naturally and instinctively bond to their parents. What if a large number of people never outgrow this phase, and need to fill this place in their brains with something once they have left their real parents and moved on? In other words, what if this place in the brain remains into adulthood for many people, long after it has served its need, and people feel lonely unless they fill this place with something? Having an "all-knowing, all-loving" invisible friend would be an obvious thing to fill it with. If you can heighten the illusion by believeing that this imaginary friend answers prayers, all the better.

Is this a direct proof that God is imaginary? No. But it shows that theists have strong incentives to delude themselves into believing.

mazaje: God is always their default position for "I don't know". . .If god exist then there should be direct and objective evidence for his existence simple. . .lets assume that god exist, he has this special message he wants to share with the whole of humanity and the best he can do is to send the message for an arabic man in arabic to cram and recite to other humans?. . .Even humans will not do this. .Humans will not employ this failed and ludicrous system .If the President of Nigerian for example has a special message for all Nigerians and wants to send the message to all of Nigerians he appears on TV and speaks the English which is the common and official language of the country. . .He will not appear to one obscured man in Benue state speak to him in Tiv and tell him to share the message to all Nigerians. . .Extra ordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence, you can not make extra ordinary claims and then produce extremely weak evidence or non evidence for your claims.

Well said.

mazaje: Nice one, but the theist will tell you that when it comes to evidence for god you are not expected to demand for an objective evidence but some tenuous one like the Koran is the word of god. . .I wonder why they do this. . .

^Exasperating as hell...

Their most common rationalization for the lack of scientific evidence is the "Allah must remain hidden" argument. Many would try to rationalize Allah's existence by saying something like this:

"The existence of the universe proves Allah's existence. Something had to create the universe. Science has no explanation for the universe's creation. Therefore, Allah created it."

Bunch of Frauds.

diamondpaul: Oh yea, there is evil...due to the negativity of mindset's evil is conceived. Evil is not physical thing to start with, but can be a mindset's filled with negativity which produces bad output eg why would war even be in the first place, the prusso-japanese war,the chinese japanese war,the world war 1 nd 2 etc #enough said...guess u v'e gotten the point or here in nigeria the kidnaping's nd killing's .

But can something be FORCED to wear such garment when IT doesn't exist? Basically, theists are systematically offing each other to see who's got the better IMAGINARY friend. Now, can such actions be termed "evil" or "good?" Nothing is that simple, my friend.

There is the absurdity that comes when you compare any two people's views of heaven. Everyone's fabrication of heaven is different. For some it involves harps and clouds and halos. For others it involves hot and cold running virgins. For some people, the actual body is transported magically to heaven as described in the holy books. For others, your "soul" floats out of the body and makes it way to St. Peter. And so on. People make up anything they like, because heaven is a completely imaginary place, a fairy tale invented by human imagination.

Just had my first taste of 'Nakéd News'...

Mama Mia! Canada is truly progressive.

tbaba12345: I will do that in my next post, driving now.

Okay, drive safe.

tbaba12345: But i have evidence for my beliefs.

God does not need empirical validaton because almost all of the truths we hold are not empirical.

https://www.nairaland.com/1898514/qurans-miracle-non-arabic-speakers

What?? Elaborate more on the bolded, please.

tbaba12345: vii. Many of the truths we hold on to are not via empirical testing.

viii. I have a much higher degree of certainty in my beliefs via pure deductive reasoning

viii. If the premises of deduction is true, then you can reach certainty

e.g Boys are male

Adam is a boy

so Adam is male.

ix. For instance, i can make the following claims

1. A miracle is an event that lies outside of the productive capacity of nature

2. The Qur’an’s literary form lies outside of the productive capacity of nature

3. Therefore, the Qur’an is a miracle.

There is an overwhelming body of evidence for each premise so i can arrive at certainty about this. Plus, i have studied the Qur'an relatively in depth.

Here are some deductive reasonings of my own. For example:

-God has never left any physical evidence of his existence on earth.
-God has never spoken to modern man, for example by taking over all the television stations and broadcasting a rational message to everyone.
-The Bible and Qur'an we have is provably incorrect and is obviously the work of primitive men rather than God.
-When we analyze prayer with statistics, we find no
evidence that God is "answering prayers."
-Huge, amazing atrocities like the Holocaust and AIDS
occur without any response from God.
-And so on...
(No empirical evidence showing that God exists).

If you think about it as a rational person, this lack of evidence is startling. There is not one bit of empirical evidence indicating that today's "God", nor any other contemporary god, nor any god of the past, exists. In addition we know that:

-If we had scientific proof of God's existence, we would talk about the "science of God" rather than "faith in God".
-If we had scientific proof of God's existence, the study of God would be a scientific endeavor rather than a theological one.
-If we had scientific proof of God's existence, all religious people would be aligning on the God that had been scientifically proven to exist. Instead there are thousands of gods and religions.

The reason for this lack of evidence is easy for any unbiased observer to see. The reason why there is no empirical evidence for God is because God is imaginary.

Deductive reasoning 101. Two can play this game, bro.

kemiola89: Strike back is no match for Jack Bauer 24.... in fact I hate that series it bores me to sleep

Actually, Strike Back is better. More Gunfights, more machismo, more dynamic, less predictable, and much more mature content. Strike Back is not for people below 18 years of age. It's Rated-R.

Eberex: I recommend HOMELAND and BREAKING BAD. The former has just 4 seasons while the latter 3 seasons. Both are very good, and I prefer them to 24 because they look more real and the main actors died at the end.

Homeland currently has 3 Seasons as of September 15 2014, While Breaking Bad wrapped up earlier this year with it's 5th Season.

Homeland is still ongoing and will return next year, and Brody that died towards the end of season 3 was the supporting actor, not the lead. The protagonist, Carrie Matheson, is very much alive and kicking.

Where do you get all the false infos you've been dishing out in this thread at alarming frequency, anyway?

tbaba12345: Again, you keep proving my point, you have no objective moral anchor.

I have not said atheists are immoral, I have said their morals are subjective and ever changing.

The bolded is false:

i. Religious give more:

“The differences in charity between secular and religious people are dramatic. Religious people are 25 percentage points more likely than secularists to donate money (91 percent to 66 percent) and 23 points more likely to volunteer time (67 percent to 44 percent). And, consistent with the findings of other writers, these data show that practicing a religion is more important than the actual religion itself in predicting charitable behavior. For example, among those who attend worship services regularly, 92 percent of Protestants give charitably, compared with 91 percent of Catholics, 91 percent of Jews, and 89 percent from other religions.”

http://www.hoover.org/research/religious-faith-and-charitable-giving

“However, regarding American giving to charitable organizations, Regnerus et al. (1998) found an association with religiosity by analysing the data from the 1996 Religious Identity and Influence Survey. The 13 percent of the American population which considered itself non-religious gave less money to charitable organizations than did the rest of the population which held religious beliefs.” (The Oxford Handbook of The Sociology of Religion. Edited by Peter B. Clarke. OUP. 2011, pp. 883-884)

..the single biggest predictor of whether someone will be charitable is their religious participation.
Religious people are more likely to give to charity, and when they give, they give more money: four times as much. And Arthur Brooks told me that giving goes beyond their own religious organization:
"Actually, the truth is that they're giving to more than their churches," he says. "The religious Americans are more likely to give to every kind of cause and charity, including explicitly non-religious charities."

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=2682730&page=2

ii. Lower risk of depression, drug abuse and suicide:

evidence for main effects and stress buffering effects carried out an analysis of over 200 social studies and found that high religiousness predicts a rather lower risk of depression, drug abuse and fewer suicide attempts.

( Smith T, McCullough M and Poll J. (2003). Religiousness and depression: evidence of a main effect and the moderating influence of stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin. 129. 614-636.)

iii. In 2002 Bryan Johnson and colleagues of the University of Pennsylvania Centre for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society reviewed 498 studies that had been published in peer reviewed journals. They concluded that a large majority of studies showed a positive correlation between religious commitment and higher levels of perceived well-being and self esteem, and lower levels of hypertension, depression and criminal delinquency. ( Keith Ward. Is Religion Dangerous? Lion Hudson Plc. 2006.)

So my friend, i beg to differ. That statement is just false. There is a difference between the moral values of the religious and the irreligious.

This argument would be perfectly valid if the theist (you) was willing to concede that their God is a social construction or metaphorical concept. Most theists aren't comfortable with that, though, and theism simply does not stand up in the face of scientific scrutiny. Believing in something does not make it true.

Morality is not subjective or democratic. It does not need belief to make it work. Gravity, for example, works the same whether you have faith in it or not. You do not need to choose to believe in gravity because it's an immutable fact of the universe.

tbaba12345: I argue that God is the best explanation to explain this and the reasons are as follows:

1. Where does consciousness come from? Theism best explains this.

2. Theism answers how consciousness entered the physical world.

3. Theism has greater explanatory power. It is something deeply rooted in the very essence of reality.

The materialist view point is a thing of miracles as it fails to explain how consciousness popped into existence through just physical processes.

4. Theism explains the gap between nonphysical mental and physical brain states and how they interact.

5. Theism explains why we have an awareness of what it means to be you

Now, the jump between materialistic naturalistic explanation and the subjective experience is too much. There has to be something that bridges that gap. This is where i feel a theistic explanation is the best explanation and makes perfect sense.

^^^

Every species that we see today is derived from simple, single-cell organisms over the course of hundreds of millions of years. In other words, there was no supernatural creation process for humans as described in the theist holy books.

As you think about this, what you will realize is that evolved beings have no souls. Human beings are no different from any other animal, insect, plant or bacteria in the way that we have evolved. In the same way that every other living thing on planet Earth is soulless, humans are soulless. The whole notion of a soul is a figment of human imagination.

Consciousness is merely the byproduct of the human psyche as a result of chemical reactions. The human body is nothing but a set of chemical reactions. The chemical reactions powering a human life are no different from the reactions powering the life of a bacterium, a mosquito, a mouse, a dog or a chimp. When a human being dies, the chemical reactions stop.

We imagine that we have "souls," fabricate the concept of "eternal life" and then fantasize a place called "heaven," complete with streets of gold, calorie-free foods, frolicking virgins and whatever else we can come up with. Theists imagine it so vividly and repeat the fantasy so often that they actually believe it to be reality.

Where did the first cell come from? Theism will argue that God magically created the first living cell. This, of course, is silly. The scientific principle that describes the origin of life is called "abiogenesis." In the same way that there is no supernatural being involved in evolution, there is no supernatural being involved in abiogenesis. Both the creation of life and the evolution of species are completely natural processes.

In order to see the truth, you need to understand that all explanations involving " magic " are false. The fact is, God had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of life on this planet nor with any part of the evolutionary process. As soon as you accept this fact, you realize that you have no soul. God is imaginary and the biblical concept of everlasting life is a fairy tale.

The fact that we exist as a conscious, intelligent, rational species is an accident of nature that involved no supernatural intervention. There is no part of the scientific explanation of evolution that says, "a mythical supernatural being reaches in right here and guides it." Evolution, by its very nature, is a supernatural-free process.

As a species we have believed all of this religious dogma for centuries, and most of us believe it today to some degree. And yet... it is all fiction . Today's "God" is just as fictional as were the gods of the Egyptians, the Romans and the Aztecs. The case for theism is a fraud.

tbaba12345: Your whole essay prove my point... Also you are incorrect in one area, there is enough food on the planet to feed everyone on it. The problem is not lack of food, the problem is its distribution. This video explains it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGra85DWWNA#t=108
interact.

I don't see how. From a scientific viewpoint, morality does not stem from God. Instead, it has its roots in brain chemicals and is supported by strong cultural conditioning. Parents pass their morals along to their children, and individuals take social cues regarding "right" and "wrong" behaviors from friends, family, media influence and more.

It's fashionable for religious people to claim that atheists are immoral hedonists, but a quick survey of real people shows that to be false. By and large, atheists are no less moral than any other group of people.

Chiichii2010: plz@ raymc was not able to download as you said,the third part was not clear,i did not see the pic instruction well,plz can you tell me easier way to download youtube films or make third explanation well.thank you

Forget about the picture, mate. Once you're successfully rerouted to the Webpage similar to the one under step 3, things will become clearer. The website is self explanatory. Just make sure you follow all instructions to the letter though.

An alternative solution is to get a Tubemate apk app. It's the best YouTube automatic downloader for Android OS at the moment. You can download one at 4shared file sharing platform, or Zippyshare.

tbaba12345: It isn't complex.
You are reaffirming my position. What you have presented is not objective, a atheist can not present an objective basis for morality. Hence, his values of morality are based on his societal influences and prejudices which changes over time.
There is only one concept that transcends that human subjectivity.

^^Bollocks.

There is no clear definition of good or evil in the real world. What you call Unnatural sex between two people of the same gender is quite natural to the perpetrators. Dolphins practise gay sex all the time, yet you don't see anybody judging them. What you may call taboo or Inbreeding is nothing but expression of love between siblings or Parents and offsprings accordingly. Infact, Chimpanzees are notorious for their incestious relationships, and Dogs too. Yet people still keep them as pets.

The point I'm trying to make is that, when it comes to morality, the definition of the terms, Good and Evil, becomes blurry.

tbaba12345: You talk about human nature, this is an interesting concept because the best explanation for our consciousness and nature is God. As a muslim, i do believe all humans have inherent good (called the fitrah in Islam) but its manifestation is affected on environmental factors.

^^You're not seeing the bigger picture...

An opposing side is generally seen as evil, and whoever rises above their enemies becomes the good guy just because they are more powerful and their ways are more understood, like in WWII all the German soldiers would not have fought so hard and risked life and limb like that thinking they were the bad guys! Which begs another question:

"Do the Bad guys know they are the bad guys or are they only bad if they lose?"

All I'm saying is that plenty of things you see as evil or bad things are very well ordered. I think history shows that in their perverse logic, the Nazis thought they were doing good for the German people. We judge that logic as madness but in itself it was ordered.

In a cold logical sense, we should eliminate 60% of the Earth's surplus population because there's not enough resources to go around. Obviously, it can be interpreted as an evil idea but in a world divorced from absolutes it makes perfect sense.

tbaba12345: For you, there are no objective good because you need an anchor that is not based on human subjectivity.
I can expand on the concept that human consciousness is best explained by God if you want.

Like I said earlier, Bollocks. My curiosity is piqued all the same. Let's see what you got.

wiegraf: where to even begin...

if the vow is as meaningless as you imply, then surely it shouldn't matter if I choose to invoke pikiwokis name, no? better yet, I get them good xtians to vow using pikiwokis name, no?

doctors, lawyers, school children, legally binding documents, etc all should use his noodliness.

this is a policy they even got rid off, the only reason I see them using to revert to relative barbarism is that great scourge: Islam. why should the rest of us suffer because Muslims refuse to grow up?

and I would think claiming you're a multicultural society whilst shoving your gods down peoples throat readily qualifies as hipocrisy. is that the 'hipocrisy' you speak of, as I really can't see your point...

make no mistake about it, I'm proudly hipocritical when it comes to islam, for justifiable reasons from my POV (and I dare say any right thinking person, right in my view obviously, should be worried considering what their culture entails), but this is easily taking it too far

what makes you think only a minority of atheists have a problem with this in the first place? and even if so, that automatically makes said minority wrong??

-You were at a train station and the train was running late.
-A very attractive woman was sitting beside you reading a religious magazine.
-You struck up a conversation with her.
-But somehow, she cleverly maneuvered the conversation into a sermon.
-You tried to tell her that you don't believe in God, but she persisted.
-You know her sermons to you were efforts in futility, so you humoured her and pretended to listen, maybe in the interest of peace, or maybe you were just being polite.
-The train finally arrived,
-Here's your chance! You swiftly disappeared through it's doors without so much as a "Goodbye." The end.

That's a fine analogy on how to handle a delicate situation without relegating to a bìtchy persona.

@the bold, a lot of people don't know this, but American version of Democracy has a religious past. America’s Founding Fathers believed that Liberty, freedom and religion were inseparable. True story.

Majority of atheist like myself know and accept this, since - apart from a few public religious recitations here and there, many of which are getting amended as we speak - secularism promotes liberty and freedom.

Quit playing the victim cards already. Atheists are not victims and can never be. I'm an atheist living in a secular community and I don't feel threatened. If I don't feel threatened, then why should you?

...Unless, you live in Iraq.

tbaba12345: Meaning you have no objective sense of what is evil, yet you tried building an argument against God based on that. What you have are social conventions that change with time. So it is evil today, it is great tomorrow.

Like i said before, it is ludicrous for you to have come up with that argument in the first place.

Not really. 'TIS a complex topic. The problem is, how to say good is really good and bad is really bad. In my earlier posts I have mentioned the higher thoughts, and I have mentioned some examples. The world we are living in teaches us about good and evil. Now can we just throw away all years of this teaching. It is impossible. What I'm trying to say, is that good and evil is only of cultural and belief derivation. The whole thing is a mirror of the human nature.