Lars

Wow Robert that was a brilliant description of how it feels to be in a hurricane!  I almost feel I can cross it off my bucket list now!

Seriously mate, that sounds horrendous. I hope you and your family can get repaired and up and running as quickly as possible.  And yeah, this is where god comes in – it’s the fear factor that amplifies the b…[Read more]

Harris uses the tumor as an extreme example because he has less argument for fates inevitability – some of us here do subscribe to the position that everything that happens, happens inevitably due to previous events, and that humans may have no true say in how they behave.  The position that Harris is trying to start from is the same – a person…[Read more]

The person committing the crime is not responsible because fate made him do it?  Maybe.

It doesn’t matter, because in the vilification of the criminal behaviour, the collective of people benefits in reinforcing the sense of what is and is not acceptable behaviour in the group.

Punishing the hapless criminal is a useful tool for moral cognizance.

One of the problems with this thought experiment is you are comparing a discrete problem with a metaphysical one. These are not comparable. We can easily measure an animal and the space of their closet Finding the existence of some strange phenomena somewhere somewhere in the universe….is currently well past our ability to test and possibly u…[Read more]

A negative positive claim does not automatically mean a positive negative claim. They are not interchangeable and they have real life applications. For example:

Someone told me there is a 12 year old who isolated a cure for all cancers in his improvised laboratory or there is some girl who can somehow breather under water. I don’t believe this s…[Read more]

I’m not an ex Christian- I never had to escape.  However, I spent my life in London when I wasn’t globetrotting.  If someone in London told me they’d pray for me, I’d hear it as if they’d said they’d say a little magic spell for me.  Most Londoners would. A bit weird, but whatever floats your boat.   You just smile a little and move hastily pas…[Read more]

You cannot keep babies out of ovens.  You have to start with that precept.  After that, I would consider that the perpetrator would probably put the baby in the oven under a different perceived reason if they had no religion.  When you scratch under the surface, most religious atrocities are actually atrocities using the cover of religion.  W…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Apparently, this isn’t atheism, because nowadays most atheists insist that atheism isn’t a belief in the nonexistence of God, it’s simply having no belief as regards God. In other words, they haven’t given it any thought. I think that’s nuts.

Believing there is no God is one thing. It’s not entirely unreasonable one since we’ve nev…[Read more]

Enough off topic now to call it so.  Can we please get back to Unseen’s starving rhino?

Belle Rose wrote:
@davis Money

So if I bought you your flight and vacation time…you’d go to Mecca, submit to Islam and marry a muslim man?

Belle Rose wrote:
RE: Delusions

Websters dictionary:

Delusion: 1. the act of tricking or deceiving someone :the state of being deluded.

Deluded: 1.  deceived by false beliefs

So no. A delusion is not automatically a symptom of being crazy.

Cambridge dictionary:

1. belief in something that is not true:

ex. He’s under the delusion that he wi…[Read more]

Belle Rose wrote:
It’s crossed my mind

What has stopped you?

Belle Rose wrote:
I don’t need to explain myself to you.

Then why should we take your claims seriously?

You haven’t the slightest clue what I believe so don’t tell me I’m delusional.

How on Earth can we know. YOU WON’T TELL US WHAT YOU BELIEVE. But that’s not even relevant. Any supernatural incredible claim…is a delusion without evidence. The word “God” is already enough.

here It is!!!!! Dawkins God delusion bullshit. You get angry call me mental…

[Read more]

My honest answer is I DONT KNOW.

So it’s unreasonable of us to expect incredible evidence of a God…and our examples given are easily dismissed as unreasonable and cliché by you…without a detailed explanation…but you don’t know any examples of evidence we could give you that you wouldn’t dismiss as unreasonable and cliché. Uffffff. How can an…[Read more]

The last time I checked, having a delusion does not put one on the list of persons with mental disorders.  It puts one on the list of persons who have a delusion.

Belle Rose wrote:
My original question when I posed it about God wasn’t about any specific God. It was just any sort of God. Why now are you asking me like this? I don’t understand your logic and you’re deviating from what I’m trying to explain. My honest answer is I DONT KNOW.

And this conversation has morphed into one which is clearly about t…

[Read more]

I think your world view is a delusion, just as I think Islam, Hinduism, Communism, alien abductions are also delusions.  But I don’t hold them in contempt. I do hold your ducking and dodging in contempt. Something that mysteriously materialised at about the exact time you admitted your world view. Now it’s the fifth time you’ve avoided a qu…[Read more]

YOU DIDN’T ANSWER MY QUESTION. You avoided it. You explained why you accepted God. You did not tell us what kind of evidence WE (or other people who have never heard of this God) should be good enough to believe in the God of the Bible. I’ll put this as clear as possible…and be specific:

What kind of evidence should be enough for a…[Read more]

Belle Rose wrote:
…driven by selfish motives…

This is pretty low Belle. It’s clear you hold our expectation of critical analysis and rational evidence in contempt. I assume then that you accept most  world views that are told to you. For example that Mohammed was the last prophet of God, Jesus was not divine and the Koran is the final word. I…[Read more]