jakelafort wrote:
rhonjon, you’ve copied text without adding your own!

Oops! Didn’t realize that.

I was replying to Unseen’s post about racism. I said:

We no longer use the word “racist.” In out enlightened, politically correct parlance, we now say “socially obsolete.”

In response to the subsequent posts, I must say the polemic b…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:

jakelafort wrote:
Call a spade a spade. I have a foggy memory of that phrase being a public issue some time ago. I think many are unaware of any bigotry associated.

Is bigotry a mere colloquial vocabulary choice or an intended use? Words and expressionse that once had racist meanings: “peanut gallery,” “paddy wagon,” “mumbo…

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jakelafort wrote:
Call a spade a spade. I have a foggy memory of that phrase being a public issue some time ago. I think many are unaware of any bigotry associated. The racist term i have heard on and off since childhood is gypped. You must know that one if you are an American. “That son of a bitch gyped me!” Just like spade a spade oft times the…

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Simon Paynton wrote:
Spirituality could be described as an umbrella term. Also, many of its constituent concepts are vague and fuzzy too. That doesn’t mean they don’t refer to anything.

What’s important—what will help us to start communicating and answering the original question—is not what the word “spiritual” means universally in all its ub…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:

jakelafort wrote:
What do you mean by “spiritual”, in this case?”

See what i mean? Worthless word. If we can’t understand the speaker without asking their definition then we have come upon a word that ought to be obsolete and archaic.

I think “self-improvement” or “self-purification” are spiritual concepts that comes into…

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TheEncogitationer wrote:
Rhonjon,

If I were describing a character in Greek mythology or popular fiction, I wouldn’t leave a disclaimer letting people know that character doesn’t really exist. Maybe I should do that when I describe god. I just figure that at an atheist website, it goes without saying.

This is true, though as you can see from For…

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TheEncogitationer wrote:
Rhonjon, He would have to first exist, but, yes, the God portrayed in The Holy Bible would definitely count as one.

If I were  describing a character in Greek mythology or popular fiction, I wouldn’t leave a disclaimer letting people know that character doesn’t really exist.  Maybe I should do that when I descr…[Read more]

Is God A Psychopath?

Unseen wrote:
I was told that in Heaven the “saved” praise God constantly. Sounds like fun(?). No thanks. I’ll take extinction over that.

Sounds like some cosmic ego maniac who throws a hissy fit whenever anyone else gets any attention. When I used to go to church, a man whom everybody said was a prophet came and said al this emphasis on prais…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Carl Sagan said: “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” If the stars did not explode and send the debris of atoms around the Universe we would not be here. We can credit our creation to the death of stars and the molecules and amino acids they produce. I h…

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Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
I have always liked Carl Sagan. I also like the Jim Morrison slant on it (more than the John Lennon idea!) They are waiting to take us into the severed garden Do you know how pale and wanton thrillful Comes death on a strange hour? Unannounced, unplanned for Like a scaring over-friendly guest you’ve brought to bed D…

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Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Hi! According to the Elohim the universe is infinite in time and space with no beginning,middle or end just existing in the ever present eternal now moment. That is not scientifically correct.

I had to think about that. My conclusion is that while it’s true space is infinite(if humans could live long enough and t…[Read more]

RichRaelian wrote:
Hi! According to the Elohim the universe is infinite in time and space with no beginning,middle or end just existing in the ever present eternal now moment.

RichRaelian wrote:
Hi! According to the Elohim the universe is infinite in time and space with no beginning,middle or end just existing in the ever present eternal now…

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RichRaelian wrote:
Hi! I want to go to the eternal life planet.

That would be Neptune. It’s so cold there your body would go into deep freeze and you’d never die.

_Robert_ wrote:
I realized that heaven is a carrot tied to a stick, oddly enough I felt a sense of relief. Keeping score on my sins and up to date on confessions and prayers is a real chore. There was the fear of that fire pit as well. That shit weighs heavy on a 7-year-old. And well, heaven simply makes no sense. Without sorrow there is no joy.…

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yet, the bible tells us about angels who had been created there and were so miserable that they left when they saw human women. That’s like sitting at a table with a filet mignon on your plate and having a Big Mac attack. This was the ancient world. Before Ivory s…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:

rhonjon wrote:

_Robert_ wrote:
Just a few clever force multipliers no doubt. Mechanical leverage is an amazing thing. <iframe title=”AMAZING VIDEO! Man Lifts 20 Ton Block By Hand?” src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/E5pZ7uR6v8c?feature=oembed” width=”670″ height=”377″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=””&…

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_Robert_ wrote:
Just a few clever force multipliers no doubt. Mechanical leverage is an amazing thing. <iframe title=”AMAZING VIDEO! Man Lifts 20 Ton Block By Hand?” src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/E5pZ7uR6v8c?feature=oembed” width=”670″ height=”377″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=””></iframe>

We have no more evidence of this mechanical…[Read more]

1.       Slave labor – let’s say the average stone in the pyramids weighed in at 5 tons. It would take 33+ slaves, each one able to bench press 300 lbs. would there be enough surface are…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
The kid next door on my childhood street in Palm Beach County grew up to become a Catholic priest who sexually abused a woman while performing an exorcism on her. Lucky for him, the church settled with her out of court. Prior to that, he was sort of a rock star priest. They were so proud.

His anti-abortion activity began in the…

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Unseen wrote:

jakelafort wrote:
Ever see the medieval Christian devices to stop erections while sleeping ?

Do they involve mousetraps or starving weasels?

Mousetrap?! I can’t believe you said that. It even made me wince. They may be schizophrenic, but apparently, they’re not squeamish.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Ever see the medieval Christian devices to stop erections while sleeping ? Put a nun in your bed?? Nun for you tonight Holy Father!

Three nuns were at a vegetable stand where they brought cucumbers on sale four for a dollar.

First nun: Wait a minute. There are four cucumbers, but there are only three of…[Read more]

DrBob wrote:
Oh, I don’t think we’re any more schizophrenic than anyone else. For the record, Dia de Los Muertos is not a Catholic holiday or celebration, official or otherwise, and some practices are discouraged by the Church. It’s a cultural celebration, much like the 4th of July or Memorial Day is in the U.S. Priests may visit cemeteries with…

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Unseen wrote:
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it but Roman Catholicism has a highly irrational side as well as a highly rational side. The irrational side incorporates a fair amount of paganism and local religious practices having no liturgical justification. Mexico, a largely Catholic country gives us a couple well-known examples. One…

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As long as you keep God out there, nebulous and ineffable, his existence cannot be disproven. But when you entomb God in the pages of a book and claim he did this, that, and the other in human history, you open those claims to the scrutiny of historians a…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Rhonjon,

The Universe is Not Expanding. What is it Doing?

It just is what it is, as as people dejectedly say nowadays about things that do not have to be that way. 😁 More seriously, expanding does not necessarily mean everything is expanding at the same pace or direction. Hence, individual entities within the Universe…

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it’s crazy trying to make sense of this. The chu…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
“I’d like to see the day when Christianity goes the way of Zeus. Will it be a roll of the dice or is there some sense to the way things happen?” You are not likely to encounter many antitheists with greater vituperation and contempt for religion. Having said that make Christianity disappear and in its place some other horro…

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_Robert_ wrote:
The problem is that most of the world’s cultures are so preloaded with the artifacts of religion. It invades our languages, our traditions, our institutions, our relationships, hierarchies and gatherings, our expectations and our history. There is no pure control group; we have no idea what a non-fantasy-inclined secular human s…

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My survival doesn’t depend on me sensing infra red or seeing the same color that you see. All I need is to be a…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
I think what this thread is trying to determine is whether we can reap the benefits of spirituality (peace, love, happiness, social harmony, a sense of awe) without having to resort to religious delusion, supernaturalism, mysticism. Reminds me of can we be good without god. How the theists have controlled the narrative and had…

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Unseen wrote:
We know more about the cosmos than we know about consciousness. In a sense, we all know what it is. It’s what we have when we are conscious. What is the relationship between what’s inside the consciousness and the world outside of it? How is it produced? Even knowing where consciousness resides in the brain tells us little. We may…

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Simon Paynton wrote:

rhonjon wrote:
What we feel for Russia is not love but a calculated understanding that we would benefit from a healthy Russian society. Or if not benefit directly, then at least not fear nuclear attack.

I think in general we need to have compassion for our enemies, or we’re all lost. If we want Russia to be doing well, w…

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I think what this thread is trying to determine is whether we can reap the benefits of spirituality (peace, love, happiness, social harmony, a sense of awe) without having to resort to religious delusion, supernaturalism, my…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
To love someone is not to want them to be happy. What might make them happy could be, to quote Conan The Barbarian, “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women”

The West wants Russia to be happy, at least in the sense of being well functioning and well adj…

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_Robert_ wrote:

Unseen wrote:

_Robert_ wrote:
Yes, there was real science, math, engineering and even some true medicine going on. They knew the earth was round (~5th century BC) and even had astronomical computers like the Antikythera mechanism 50BC.

For f**k’s sake. European astronomy didn’t even start to catch up to the cosmological and ast…

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What we call the age of discovery was actually the age of rediscovery. Very few intellectuals today want to admit it, but I think that when a mob of angry Christians burned the library of Alexandria in the fifth or sixth century, they didn’t destroy everything. They kept some of that knowledge just like the C…[Read more]

She was wrong, of course. The biblical writers evinced n…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:

rhonjon wrote:
“I’m not perfect, just forgiven.”

That must have made you want to throw up.

It made me seriously question the mental state of people who say we need religion to give us an objective moral standard.

Unseen wrote:

Simon Paynton wrote:

rhonjon wrote:
But if I love a person, I want them to be happy even if I’m not the one who is making them happy.

That sounds like a good definition.

Here’s how I put it: True love (which one gets only from parents or true friends) is “wanting what’s best for the other person even if it’s not what you would wan…

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marulimarulaki wrote:
Thanks for your replies which make me aware that I may have presented my topic in a misleading way. This is a public forum so this is not meant to deal with my personal situation. I mentioned my partner only because my experience with him made me aware of some more theoretical considerations concerning different moral…

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marulimarulaki wrote:
My partner and I have some basic conflict concerning morals as the attitude behind treating each other. When we got together it seemed as if we agreed sharing atheism. Only later it became clear how our different upbringing has influenced our moral self-guidance. I grew up with the usual christian brain washing as a child.…

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Unseen wrote:

rhonjon wrote:

Strega wrote:
Rhonjon, wasn’t there some kind of basic ‘green’ tutorial in those Bible verses? Something about burning a bush that spoke in voices?There you go! The burning bush was actually my man Moses and his buddies lighting up joints in the wilderness.

Here’s how you separate your response from the quotati…

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Simon Paynton wrote:

Autumn wrote:
Love and patriotism can be explained behaviourally even if one doesn’t feel those particular emotions.

How would you define “love”?That depends on the object of one’s love. If I say I love chocolate I mean I deeply appreciate the gustatory sensation I get when chocolate is in my mouth. That is possess…

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Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Not only is the Universe expanding but the rate of expansion is accelerating. All objects that have mass (mass not weight) will exert a “pull” on each other when close enough to each other. Think of the moon and the Earth and the Sun. The Earth “thinks” it is shooting in a straight line through Space. But is it bein…

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Strega wrote:
Rhonjon, wasn’t there some kind of basic ‘green’ tutorial in those Bible verses? Something about burning a bush that spoke in voices?There you go! The burning bush was actually my man Moses and his buddies lighting up joints in the wilderness.