Atheists, Agnostics, and Non-Believers

vexen @ 08:05 pm: A Critical and Sensible The Christian Plan of Salvation
I have rewritten large chunks of "The Crucifixion Facade" by Vexen Crabtree (2002). I've rewritten the central analogy about the Christian story of God's plan for salvation, highlighting the absurd nature of the whole plan, check it out:

God makes the rules of the Universe. Adam and Eve sinned: We suffer for it. This is God's rule. He then creates a Son, lets it be murdered in a brutal way, so that we no longer suffer the Original Sin. It would have been much more logical if God simply never allowed us to inherit the sins of Adam and Eve. God makes the rules... then creates more suffering (of Jesus) in order to repeal one of his own rules? It is a contradiction, and a moral absurdity, and therefore can't be true of a perfect, moral or just God.

An analogy can be used to explain the fall of man and the salvation offered by God's plan for Jesus. Each successive part of the story is less moral than the version before it:

1. You have slipped, and are hanging from a mountain ledge. A man sees your predicament and pulls you to safety, away from the certain death that awaits you below.</p>

The next version introduces the idea that you have to 'accept' Jesus as your saviour before God will save you:

2. You have slipped, and are hanging from a mountain ledge. A man sees your predicament and tells you he can save you, if you admit Him as your savior. When you do, He pulls you to safety, away from the certain death that awaits you below.</p>

The next version introduces the idea that God created the system of original sin ('the fall') in the first place, and makes us subject to it:

3. You're on a mountain ledge, when the man pushes you off. You have no chance except to grab onto the ledge. He tells you he can save you, if you admit Him as your savior. When you do, He pulls you to safety, away from the certain death that awaits you below.</p>

And the final story of Christian salvation introduces the idea of the crucifixion of Jesus to atone for our sins:

4. You're on a mountain ledge, when the man pushes you off. You have no chance except to grab onto the ledge. The man is holding baby Jesus in his arms. He tells you he can save you, if you admit Him as your savior. When you do, the man throws the child over the edge so he can then pull you to safety, away from the certain death that awaits you below.</p>

There is no reason to throw the child over the cliff in order to save mankind. None at all... God can just save us, even if its son never existed. Some argue that it was necessary because of the laws of the Universe, that a sacrifice had to be made. However... who made the laws of the Universe? God! [...]

Submitting to such a monstrous scheme is to condone its immorality, to sacrifice our morals too, along with our dignity. We are granted knowledge between good and evil... and I know an evil scheme when I see one! If I am a selfish person, I would do anything to attain heaven... but if I am a moral person, I cannot accept God's scheme as portrayed by Christian beliefs.

i_ @ 02:08 am: some interesting things i ran across tonight


and in there, a link to this site

i_ @ 12:04 am: Dick to the Dawk to the PhD


( Possible Lyrics Transcript )

link to a torrent for a 720p AVI file of the video

madfilkentist @ 03:36 pm: Easter
Easter is a Christianized version of an ancient holiday. It stands for the return of spring and the return of life which goes with it.

Unfortunately, it also stands for the barbaric custom of human sacrifice, just slightly disguised. It stands for the idea that if the best person is killed, the gods will look more kindly on the rest of us.

madfilkentist @ 06:27 am: Arthur C. Clarke
I just joined this forum and don't see any recent posts. To get things going again on a positive note -- or at least as positive as one can be when talking about death:

Noted science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke was buried today in Sri Lanka. By his written instructions, his funeral included "absolutely no religious rites of any kind." His tombstone read, "Here lies Arthur Clarke. He never grew up, but didn't stop growing." He was also reported to have said, "Walk into any good library and you will see my legacy there." I'm sure he didn't mean just his own books, but also all those which drew inspiration from him.

ex_django788 @ 02:54 pm: MySpace Say "NO!" To Religious Tolerance!
MySpace: No place for Atheists?

Cleveland, OH.— Social networking site, MySpace.com, panders to religious intolerants by deleting atheist users, groups and content.

Early this month, MySpace again deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group (35,000 members). This deletion, due largely to complaints from people who find atheism offensive, marks the second time MySpace has cancelled the group since November 2007.

What’s unique in this case is that the Atheist and Agnostic Group was the largest collection of organized atheists in the world. The group had its own Wikipedia entry, and in April won the Excellence in Humanist Communication Award (2007) from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University and the Secular Student Alliance.

“MySpace refuses to undelete the group, although it never violated any terms of service,” said Bryan Pesta, Ph.D., the group’s moderator. “When the largest Christian group was hacked, MySpace’s Founder, Tom Anderson, personally restored the group, and promised to protect it from future deletions.”

Read more at: http://www.secularstudents.org/node/1933

Personally I never liked MySpace anyway and was glad when I flushed my involvement with it down the toilet over a year ago. I was appalled to see their blatant disregard towards fellow atheists though.

i_ @ 09:50 pm: Six Feet Under
Brenda: I think it's all just totally random.
Nate: Really?
Brenda: Yeah. We Live, we die, ultimately nothing means anything.
Nate: How can you live like that?
Brenda: I don't know. Sometimes I wake up so fucking empty I wish I'd never been born, but what choice do I have?

(yes, it's old, but i've just been watching it lately)

i_ @ 04:32 am: i thought this was a "blue state"
i was absolutely shocked to discover that the scary cross i encountered in texas wasn't a one-of-a-kind bible-belt anomaly.  there is a cross in Effingham, IL that is perhaps even slightly taller.  i don't think i can express how much this bothers me.

i_ @ 11:03 pm: tradition
it's strange--as atheist and secular as i am, i still have these occasional moments where i'm drawn to some particular observance of judaism... maybe it's more a cultural/ethnic thing than a religious one?  i was thinking about my deceased grandparents and that led to my thinking about the tradition of putting small stones on grave markers to indicate that the person has been visited or some such and now i'm wondering if my grandfather was buried or cremated (my grandmother was cremated) and whether or not there's anywhere to put the stones to mark that someone was thinking about them.

i_ @ 11:06 pm: texas
so, more than a year ago now, i was driving toward the southwest, loosely following what used to be Route 66. It was Christmas Eve when I was driving from Springfield, MO to Amarillo, TX. All through Oklahoma (Tulsa, Oklahoma City) were reminders of christianity and xmas--many office buildings with lights left on in big crosses. It was getting later in the evening (most of this trip, i slept til 11am, got on the road at around noon, then drove til midnight or one a.m.) and I was in the middle of nowhere in the Texas panhandle, finally out of Oklahoma, and then out of nowhere, in the dark, there was this huge glowing cross. I mean huge, like way bigger than any of the farmhouses or whatnot that were around.
i don't think i can express how much it scared me and how completely incapable of conciously addressing it i found myself.
a few days later, on my way home, i found it again, this time just at sunset. i decided i had to go have a look to try to understand what this thing was. i parked a good bit away (which meant i parked off on the shoulder of some road and walked past nothing for a few hundred feet before getting there), since my car has both a Darwin fish and an Evolve fish and i didn't really know what kind of fundamentalists i might be facing. What i found was perhaps even more scary than i could have imagined. the cross has to be at least ten stories tall, probably taller. the base was probably ten feet by ten feet. all around it were life-sized crucifixes, i think representing the stations of the cross. off to one side was some sort of platform with three crucifixes, off in the other direction was a weeping virgin mary and some plaque about unborn children. it was all i could do to take pictures and get out of there. I'm not sure that any of my friends or family really understand how eerie it was.

thedolphingirl @ 08:10 am: Do you...
Love stupid people.
Like stupid people (for entertainment)
Are neutral about stupid people.
Dislike stupid people (annoying)
Hate stupid people.

What are your favorite subjects of study?

What do you think the worst dangers are of any sort of fundamentalism?

ex_v722 @ 01:20 pm: My friends found this funny.. :P
"My aunt's going to get chemotherapy tommorrow, Anthony! ;-;-;-;"
"Well, if I had any faith, I'd pray for her."

silver_dragon @ 04:23 pm:

How to Fight the Religious Right: A guide to defending yourself against Fundamentalist Christians

And no, it does not just bash them. It's actually quite informative.

ex_oni782 @ 11:58 pm: hello
I love this place ^-^

Just to let you know about myself:
I started questioning my religion in the 4th grade and eventually decided there was no God by the 5th grade ^^ I'm in the 10th grade and I'm a strong athiest. When I started questioning God so did my mother. She was a Catholic, but since I started with my whole diest/athiest things my mom became naturalist. My dad is a Jahoba witness and my older sister is a diest and younger sister is a catholic. Screwed up family indeed ^^

Heh, wake up! :p Didn't mean to bore you ^^;;

But anyway, I'm very involved when it comes to debating religion and such. I've always enjoyed sharing views with others, especially loyal christians or whatever, heh :p

silver_dragon @ 10:29 pm:

This is from the link in my last entry, but... not everyone may read to the bottom. So, here. ^^;

 

"Even if religion is not entirely true, at least it puts across important messages. What are the fundamental messages of atheism?"

There are many important ideas atheists promote. The following are just a few of them; don't be surprised to see ideas which are also present in some religions.

• There is more to moral behavior than mindlessly following rules.
• Be especially sceptical of positive claims.
• If you want your life to have some sort of meaning, it's up to you to find it.
• Search for what is true, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
• Make the most of your life, as it's probably the only one you'll have.
• It's no good relying on some external power to change you; you must change yourself.
• Just because something's popular doesn't mean it's good.
• If you must assume something, assume something easy to test.
• Don't believe things just because you want them to be true.

and finally (and most importantly):

• All beliefs should be open to question.

 

I feel like I'm quoting from some atheist bible or something. oO;

On a side note... anyone want to make an icon for the community?

silver_dragon @ 04:47 pm: Found a nice little link on atheism while browsing thefanlistings.org

http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/intro.html

alkalphoe @ 08:18 pm: Hello, all.
I am Alkal, a heavy Atheist in all my glory. I have never been religious and have only been to church a handfull of times at all, and those were merely tagging along with friends, or my grandpa (who is a minister. @_@)

Oh, a really funny joke that's sort-of on the subject, and my beliefs on hell:

A thermodynamics professor had written a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question: "Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with a proof."

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Therese Banyan during my Freshman year, 'That it will be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then 2 cannot be true, and so Hell is exothermic."

This student got the only A.

Note: I did not write that paper (Obviously) but it's a good belief on hell, don't you think? =P

silver_dragon @ 06:54 pm: Wow. Anthony posted in here before I could. Congrats, Anthony! *gives him a shiny medal*



ANYWAY.


This asylum is for atheists, agnostics, and general non-believers. Friendly debate is allowed, but no bashing, i.e. "OMG GOD DOES EXIST U ASSHOLE UR GUNA GO 2 HELL!!!1". Anyone who DOES say anything like that will be banned immediately. Again, though, FRIENDLY DEBATE is allowed. Hell, I do it all the time in kish. =P


Well, I think I've said all that I need to say..

ex_v722 @ 07:47 pm: Atheism =/= Worship of Satan.


PLEASE understand that.