One year ago, Nice massacre

ReAnimator Reagan said:
"Replacing religion with another type of worship is not atheism." --- yes it is, worshipping the STATE which is what ALWAYS happens when you remove religion is still atheism, remember atheism is the belief that god does not exist, or if you are a pussy atheist it is the lack of belief in god.....depends on your level of blind faith.

Like just because you feel something does not make it true.

None of this states with was an atheist. Sorry. The thought is that he was a DEIST. Not atheist at all.

"creator"-- Jefferson is credited with writing it and creator means god in this sense. Keep up with the shit arguments.

The facts are out on USSR already so you can be blind to that.

"Jefferson made his own Bible, in which he removed every mention of magic or the supernatural."
- 1) No he didn't remove "every mention of magic or the supernatural"
-2) He makes no statement on why he removed what he did. It is likely he wanted the moral teachings of Jesus and to put these into his philosophy of what the usa should be.

"In 1804, Jefferson began piecing together his own version of the Gospels from which he omitted the virgin birth of Jesus, miracles attributed to Jesus, divinity, and the resurrection of Jesus – among many other teachings and events.[65] He retained primarily Jesus' moral philosophy, of which he approved, and also included the Second Coming, a future judgment, Heaven, Hell, and a few other supernatural events. This compilation was completed about 1820, but Jefferson did not make these works public, acknowledging "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth" existence only to a few friends.[66] This work was published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible.["
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Jefferson was living in a time in which humanity was starting to grow up, and religious monopoly was falling to the enlightenment. You seem to be arguing along the lines of "He never said he was an atheist." Despite him showing supreme doubts in the existence of anything supernatural. I provided like a dozen quotes to show this. At most, at the time you could call him a diest, but to label him a christian or true believer, is countered by him.

On The USSR, you are arguing that the distinct lack of belief, is somehow a framework for belief. That makes zero sense.

 
first thing that went through my mind was the South Park Nice meme.
 
It's ok guys the French are going to where this went down and acting like nothing happened.

It's how they defeat terrorists in Europe.

But seriously fuck the people that did this. They can all die slow.
 
hillelslovak87 said:
I in no way agree with this assessment. Materialism is in no way required to reject religious beliefs in their own terms. The rejection of free will? I have yet to hear a religious person either explain what free will even is, and how an all powerful God who knows your future can provide such free will. On reductionism, reducing phenomenon to their lower order structure is a part of science, and no "Well God did it" can approach understanding in anywhere near the honest way science does.
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Materialism ABSOLUTELY required in order to be an atheist (well at least a logical one), if you are not a materialist, then you live room for supernatural which makes you a shitty atheist. Reductionsm and rejection of free will follows. Hell even rejection of consciousness follows. Now i am not a religious person so i am not going to discuss if God is all knowing or not, it is irrelevant.

A state banning organized religion, whilst engaging in leader and party worship, believing in a worker's paradise after death, belief in Lysenko's absurd biology among other fantasies does not strike me as being in service to a rejection of faith and a want to be rational and objective.
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Atheism is not a rejection of faith, at least that is not the mainstream definition. Besides Communists were also pretty rational and objective. The end justifies the means is being pretty rational.

I did not put the Czarist regimes on the same level of communism, considering there is no way to count all the countless people ground down by the Czarist system, it's Orthodox Church, and the numerous famines, plagues, and wars that resulted from the Church's monopoly on society and scientific development, and their role in hindering it.
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Can you give some examples where Russian Orthodox Church was killing people on a massive scale and/or started a war?

I have yet to see a single society who organized itself on Paine, Spinoza, Voltaire and Socrates, and the values they promoted, and fell to ruin.
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Well this is vague....

Please explain as to how a lack of belief in any God results in the ruin of a society. Please explain as to how Atheism was the principle cause of the massive suffering that ravaged the Soviet people.
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Atheism was but one factor when it comes to soviet suffering. I never said it was a principle cause. But you could begin to educate yourself by looking for example at militant soviet atheists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists
 
Perpetrated by a snackbar?

Leftists already forgot
 
I would have rather not seen that photograph
 
hillelslovak87 said:
Jefferson was living in a time in which humanity was starting to grow up, and religious monopoly was falling to the enlightenment. You seem to be arguing along the lines of "He never said he was an atheist." Despite him showing supreme doubts in the existence of anything supernatural. I provided like a dozen quotes to show this. At most, at the time you could call him a diest, but to label him a christian or true believer, is countered by him.

On The USSR, you are arguing that the distinct lack of belief, is somehow a framework for belief. That makes zero sense.

Click to expand...


I am aruging two things
1) You stated "Jefferson, who would most certainly be considered atheists in our time" to which I said that Jefferson was not an atheist. You have not proved otherwise.
The definition of atheism has not changed over the last 300 years...sorry.
2) That the most murderous regimes have been atheist and have pushed atheism and attempted to crush all religion, leaving only the worship of the state

and lets add 3) Atheists have been the biggest pieces of shit in the history or the world.


The rest of your baby ass crying I don't give a fuck

About religion and Jefferson:
Both Jefferson and Priestley believed that christianity had been corrupted and perverted from its original, simpler form. Jefferson was, indeed, hostile to this corrupt form of christianity, but he simultaneously believed that the philosophy of Jesus was "the most sublime and benevolent…system that ever shone on man." In a letter to Benjamin Rush, he explained:
To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.


I will just leave this here, since you just take one line here and there with NO CONTEXT
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/contexts.html

John Adams
Contextomy:
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!
Exposition: This quote is sometimes cited by people who argue against religion and want to appeal to Adams' authority, or who use the quote as evidence that the Founding Fathers were opposed to religion.

Context:
Twenty times, in the course of my late Reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it"!!! But in this exclamati[on] I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly [Adams' boyhood parish priest and Latin school master]. Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell.
Exposure: The contextomy is in quotation marks in Adams' letter, which is an important part of the context, since it shows that Adams is not endorsing that sentiment, but in fact rejecting it.

Sources:
  • John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, p. 2, 4/19/1817. This is an image of a page from the handwritten manuscript.
  • Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions, p. 3.
  • Lester J. Cappon, editor, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, Volume 2, (University of North Carolina Press, 1959), p. 509.
Resources:
Examples:

Acknowledgment: Thanks to José Gabriel Pedroso Rosa for pointing out a mistake in the Context.

Thomas Jefferson
Contextomy:
Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.
Exposition:
This contextomy appears onscreen in comedian Bill Maher's documentary Religulous (2008) during a scene discussing the Founding Fathers and religion with Ray Suarez. Maher asks Suarez:

How did this country get to be a Christian nation? I've read a lot of quotes from all the Founding Fathers. There are a lot of quotes that explicitly say we're not a Christian nation.
At this point, three quotes appear on the screen, including the Adams one (see above) and this one.

Context:
Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy,―the most sublime & benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man,―endeavored to crush your well-earnt & well-deserved fame.
Exposure:
Even taken out of context, Jefferson's quote does not support Maher's claim that the United States is not a christian nation according to the Founding Fathers. At best, the quote seems to show hostility on the part of Jefferson toward christianity.

However, the quote is taken from a letter to Joseph Priestley, who is best remembered today as a scientist, but was also a minister and author of An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782). It may be this book that Jefferson alludes to in his compliment to Priestley for "simplifying the Christian philosophy", which while "the most sublime and benevolent" is also the "most perverted system that ever shone on man". Jefferson here uses the word "perverted" in its sense of turned away from the right course, which is similar in sense to Priestley's use of the word "corruption".

Both Jefferson and Priestley believed that christianity had been corrupted and perverted from its original, simpler form. Jefferson was, indeed, hostile to this corrupt form of christianity, but he simultaneously believed that the philosophy of Jesus was "the most sublime and benevolent…system that ever shone on man." In a letter to Benjamin Rush, he explained:

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.
A letter to John Adams makes the same point as that in the letter to Priestley:

The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. … But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.
Sources:
 
Rusk said:
Materialism ABSOLUTELY required in order to be an atheist (well at least a logical one), if you are not a materialist, then you live room for supernatural which makes you a shitty atheist. Reductionsm and rejection of free will follows. Hell even rejection of consciousness follows. Now i am not a religious person so i am not going to discuss if God is all knowing or not, it is irrelevant.



Atheism is not a rejection of faith, at least that is not the mainstream definition. Besides Communists were also pretty rational and objective. The end justifies the means is being pretty rational.



Can you give some examples where Russian Orthodox Church was killing people on a massive scale and/or started a war?



Well this is vague....



Atheism was but one factor when it comes to soviet suffering. I never said it was a principle cause. But you could begin to educate yourself by looking for example at militant soviet atheists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists
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On free will, I have yet to hear it properly defined, and thus have not heard exactly how humans have it.

Atheism is a rejection of faith. The lack of theism is the whole point of the word. However, I find the word atheism to be somewhat of a category error. Do you believe in Zeus or Thor? Presumably not. Is this a worldview, or simply a rejection of the obviously false? I wager you think the latter. Everyone is an atheist on every religion they dont believe in, what are known as atheists simply go one god further.

The Russian Orthodox Church did great work to create the situation that led to World War 1. You have numerous genocides, like the Yugoslav wars, and you have massive famines, pogroms, persecutions and executions of minorities, plagues that ravaged Russia while the Church stifled legitimate science (much like the Catholic Church), and countless people who simply died due to poverty within a system that concentrated wealth and resources to the ruling powers, God consecrated all.

Look at the militant "atheists" during the USSR era, you notice they engaged in heresy hunts. They were not interested in developing moral systems and ethics devoid of supernatural faith, they had a doctrine, enjoining them to usurp God's role with the Glorious leader. This does not sound like objective, fact based analysis or a real ethical framework devoid of faith.
 
ReAnimator Reagan said:
I am aruging two things
1) You stated "Jefferson, who would most certainly be considered atheists in our time" to which I said that Jefferson was not an atheist. You have not proved otherwise.
The definition of atheism has not changed over the last 300 years...sorry.
2) That the most murderous regimes have been atheist and have pushed atheism and attempted to crush all religion, leaving only the worship of the state

and lets add 3) Atheists have been the biggest pieces of shit in the history or the world.


The rest of your baby ass crying I don't give a fuck

About religion and Jefferson:
Both Jefferson and Priestley believed that christianity had been corrupted and perverted from its original, simpler form. Jefferson was, indeed, hostile to this corrupt form of christianity, but he simultaneously believed that the philosophy of Jesus was "the most sublime and benevolent…system that ever shone on man." In a letter to Benjamin Rush, he explained:
To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.


I will just leave this here, since you just take one line here and there with NO CONTEXT
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/contexts.html

John Adams
Contextomy:
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!
Exposition: This quote is sometimes cited by people who argue against religion and want to appeal to Adams' authority, or who use the quote as evidence that the Founding Fathers were opposed to religion.

Context:
Twenty times, in the course of my late Reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it"!!! But in this exclamati[on] I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly [Adams' boyhood parish priest and Latin school master]. Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell.
Exposure: The contextomy is in quotation marks in Adams' letter, which is an important part of the context, since it shows that Adams is not endorsing that sentiment, but in fact rejecting it.

Sources:
  • John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, p. 2, 4/19/1817. This is an image of a page from the handwritten manuscript.
  • Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions, p. 3.
  • Lester J. Cappon, editor, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, Volume 2, (University of North Carolina Press, 1959), p. 509.
Resources:
Examples:

Acknowledgment: Thanks to José Gabriel Pedroso Rosa for pointing out a mistake in the Context.

Thomas Jefferson
Contextomy:
Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.
Exposition:
This contextomy appears onscreen in comedian Bill Maher's documentary Religulous (2008) during a scene discussing the Founding Fathers and religion with Ray Suarez. Maher asks Suarez:

How did this country get to be a Christian nation? I've read a lot of quotes from all the Founding Fathers. There are a lot of quotes that explicitly say we're not a Christian nation.
At this point, three quotes appear on the screen, including the Adams one (see above) and this one.

Context:
Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy,―the most sublime & benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man,―endeavored to crush your well-earnt & well-deserved fame.
Exposure:
Even taken out of context, Jefferson's quote does not support Maher's claim that the United States is not a christian nation according to the Founding Fathers. At best, the quote seems to show hostility on the part of Jefferson toward christianity.

However, the quote is taken from a letter to Joseph Priestley, who is best remembered today as a scientist, but was also a minister and author of An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782). It may be this book that Jefferson alludes to in his compliment to Priestley for "simplifying the Christian philosophy", which while "the most sublime and benevolent" is also the "most perverted system that ever shone on man". Jefferson here uses the word "perverted" in its sense of turned away from the right course, which is similar in sense to Priestley's use of the word "corruption".

Both Jefferson and Priestley believed that christianity had been corrupted and perverted from its original, simpler form. Jefferson was, indeed, hostile to this corrupt form of christianity, but he simultaneously believed that the philosophy of Jesus was "the most sublime and benevolent…system that ever shone on man." In a letter to Benjamin Rush, he explained:

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.
A letter to John Adams makes the same point as that in the letter to Priestley:

The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. … But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.
Sources:
Click to expand...
You are arguing that systems that attempted to replace Gods with leader WORSHIP, were atheist. Hopefully you can see the fallacy in this approach.

When you speak of context, you must realize that for Thomas Jefferson to say he was not a believer would have most likely not only destroyed any appeal to leadership he may have had, but could have easily put him at risk of being killed or imprisoned, considering the Christian mania that was sweeping the region he lived in.

I did not provide one line he spoke, I provided 12.

Please refute the obvious context for

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820

Immaterial existence is the essence of religious faith.

Let's take your claim, that atheism leads to moral decay and brutality. The National Institutes of Science polled it's members on their belief of God. Over 90% polled stated they rejected the idea of a God. Should the membership of the NIS not be refulgent with crimes and misdemeanors?

And once again, what is with the petulant insults? I am seeing why you've been here only a few months and already have a double yellow card, the way you carry on in discourse.
 
ALE said:
some men are evil, but people living in peace can't believe it.

all i know it's that we can't accept anything similar, at any cost.
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The comfort, tranquility and ignorance of history has blinded many western folks to the reality much of the rest of the planet live in. Whether by nature or nurture, much of the world plays by rules unrecognizable to those raised in the west. Denial of our baseness isn't helpful.
 
hillelslovak87 said:
You are arguing that systems that attempted to replace Gods with leader WORSHIP, were atheist. Hopefully you can see the fallacy in this approach.

When you speak of context, you must realize that for Thomas Jefferson to say he was not a believer would have most likely not only destroyed any appeal to leadership he may have had, but could have easily put him at risk of being killed or imprisoned, considering the Christian mania that was sweeping the region he lived in.

I did not provide one line he spoke, I provided 12.

Please refute the obvious context for

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820

Immaterial existence is the essence of religious faith.

Let's take your claim, that atheism leads to moral decay and brutality. The National Institutes of Science polled it's members on their belief of God. Over 90% polled stated they rejected the idea of a God. Should the membership of the NIS not be refulgent with crimes and misdemeanors?

And once again, what is with the petulant insults? I am seeing why you've been here only a few months and already have a double yellow card, the way you carry on in discourse.
Click to expand...

"You are arguing that systems that attempted to replace Gods with leader WORSHIP, were atheist. Hopefully you can see the fallacy in this approach. "
- one I am saying that they end up worshipping the state. This does not make them not atheist. This is my last time saying it. You can worship natural phenomena like the woods or money or women or the state.

Atheism - "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods."

1) USSR is atheist as well as the nazis and mao commies
2) Jefferson is not an atheist, but even this is not important, it was just a claim of yours I shot down. The important part is that Jefferson thought Jesus's teachings were moral and he used that to inform the building of this country, which is more important to america than if the bible is true or not.

Now, I have to go drink but continue being a loser and enjoy looking like a fucking fool. I have ripped apart your shit and if you want to keep repeating the same shit I destroyed go for it. I got to go out and drink. Later loser.

"Let's take your claim, that atheism leads to moral decay and brutality"
- stalin 10-20 million murdered
- Mao 40 million murdered
- Hitler 10 million murdered.
I don't give a shit about your surveys. I care about what is historical and verifiable fact. Communism and atheism go together and end up in misery and genocide. PERIOD.

"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings.
- Again, you are not providing ANY CONTEXT. He is not saying there is no God here. They are debating a certain letter of someone else. Nowhere is is stated that Jefferson is an atheist.
But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May 12. on matter, spirit, motion etc. It's croud of scepticisms kept me from sleep. I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid it down, again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, SEE REST IN SPOILER
But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May 12. on matter, spirit, motion etc. It's croud of scepticisms kept me from sleep. I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid it down, again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, `I feel: therefore I exist.' I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. I can concieve thought to be an action of a particular organisation of matter, formed for that purpose by it's creator, as well as that attraction in an action of matter, or magnetism of loadstone. When he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action called thinking shall shew how he could endow the Sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in the tract of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will, and, by that will, put matter into motion, then the materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us indeed that `God is a spirit,' but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the antient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter. Origen says `Deus reapse corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum corporum ratione, incorporeus.' Tertullian `quid enim deus nisi corpus?' and again `quis negabit deumesse corpus? Etsi deus spiritus, spiritus etiam corpus est, sui generis, in sua effigie.' St. Justin Martyr `{to Theion phamen einai asomaton oyk oti asomaton -- epeide de to me krateisthai ypo tinos, toy krateisthai timioteron esti, dia toyto kaloymen ayton asomaton.}' And St. Macarius, speaking of angels says `quamvis enim subtilia sint, tamen in substantia, forma et figura, secundum tenuitatem naturae eorum, corpora sunt tenuia.' And St. Austin, St. Basil, Lactantius, Tatian, Athenagoras and others, with whose writings I pretend not a familiarity, are said by those who are, to deliver the same doctrine. Turn to your Ocellus d'Argens 97. 105. and to his Timaeus 17. for these quotations. In England these Immaterialists might have been burnt until the 29. Car. 2. when the writ de haeretico comburendo was abolished: and here until the revolution, that statute not having extended to us. All heresies being now done away with us, these schismatists are merely atheists, differing from the material Atheist only in their belief that `nothing made something,' and from the material deist who believes that matter alone can operate on matter.
 
ReAnimator Reagan said:
"You are arguing that systems that attempted to replace Gods with leader WORSHIP, were atheist. Hopefully you can see the fallacy in this approach. "
- one I am saying that they end up worshipping the state. This does not make them not atheist. This is my last time saying it. You can worship natural phenomena like the woods or money or women or the state.

Atheism - "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods."

1) USSR is atheist as well as the nazis and mao commies
2) Jefferson is not an atheist, but even this is not important, it was just a claim of yours I shot down. The important part is that Jefferson thought Jesus's teachings were moral and he used that to inform the building of this country, which is more important to america than if the bible is true or not.

Now, I have to go drink but continue being a loser and enjoy looking like a fucking fool. I have ripped apart your shit and if you want to keep repeating the same shit I destroyed go for it. I got to go out and drink. Later loser.

"Let's take your claim, that atheism leads to moral decay and brutality"
- stalin 10-20 million murdered
- Mao 40 million murdered
- Hitler 10 million murdered.
I don't give a shit about your surveys. I care about what is historical and verifiable fact. Communism and atheism go together and end up in misery and genocide. PERIOD.

"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings.
- Again, you are not providing ANY CONTEXT. He is not saying there is no God here. They are debating a certain letter of someone else. Nowhere is is stated that Jefferson is an atheist.
But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May 12. on matter, spirit, motion etc. It's croud of scepticisms kept me from sleep. I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid it down, again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, SEE REST IN SPOILER
But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May 12. on matter, spirit, motion etc. It's croud of scepticisms kept me from sleep. I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid it down, again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, `I feel: therefore I exist.' I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. I can concieve thought to be an action of a particular organisation of matter, formed for that purpose by it's creator, as well as that attraction in an action of matter, or magnetism of loadstone. When he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action called thinking shall shew how he could endow the Sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in the tract of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will, and, by that will, put matter into motion, then the materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us indeed that `God is a spirit,' but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the antient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter. Origen says `Deus reapse corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum corporum ratione, incorporeus.' Tertullian `quid enim deus nisi corpus?' and again `quis negabit deumesse corpus? Etsi deus spiritus, spiritus etiam corpus est, sui generis, in sua effigie.' St. Justin Martyr `{to Theion phamen einai asomaton oyk oti asomaton -- epeide de to me krateisthai ypo tinos, toy krateisthai timioteron esti, dia toyto kaloymen ayton asomaton.}' And St. Macarius, speaking of angels says `quamvis enim subtilia sint, tamen in substantia, forma et figura, secundum tenuitatem naturae eorum, corpora sunt tenuia.' And St. Austin, St. Basil, Lactantius, Tatian, Athenagoras and others, with whose writings I pretend not a familiarity, are said by those who are, to deliver the same doctrine. Turn to your Ocellus d'Argens 97. 105. and to his Timaeus 17. for these quotations. In England these Immaterialists might have been burnt until the 29. Car. 2. when the writ de haeretico comburendo was abolished: and here until the revolution, that statute not having extended to us. All heresies being now done away with us, these schismatists are merely atheists, differing from the material Atheist only in their belief that `nothing made something,' and from the material deist who believes that matter alone can operate on matter.
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Nothing but baseless claims, insults, and the seeming mistaken idea of drinking making one worthwhile. Ugh. You'll earn your ban. And also, you have yet to even intimate as to how atheism was what motivated men like Hitler (Who quoted the Bible all the time in a country that was 80 percent Catholic, and used the Bible to justify his hatred of the Jews) were led to do their deeds from atheism as a principle.
 
ReAnimator Reagan said:
Really? Then why have communists---which are militantly atheists--murdered more people by more than 10 times at least. They have 100 million murders on their hands.
Seems some religions are shit (islam) and some are the bees knees (Christianity).

The worst genocides in the history of the REAL FUCKING WORLD AND PROVEN are all done by ATHEIST regimes.....it is not even close. You have no fucking idea of how the world works and are pitiful as fuck.
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Armenian Genocide. Done by the religion of peace.
Communism doesn't really compare, most of these 100 million deaths were due to stupidity and poverty, many of the dead were also communists like chinese peasants that supported Mao and then starved to death. Of course, there are exceptions like the Holodomor.
 
Yeah, I figured this was a thinly veiled excuse for a bash Islam thread. No discussion of Nice, what more we've learned about what happened there in the past year, what measures have taken place to prevent another attack, and what measures have been neglected. Nothing about the victims.

We already have a million of these.
 
Madmick said:
Yeah, I figured this was a thinly veiled excuse for a bash Islam thread. No discussion of Nice, what more we've learned about what happened there in the past year, what measures have taken place to prevent another attack, and what measures have been neglected. Nothing about the victims.

We already have a million of these.
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I would have rather acknowledged the fact that Islam's role ha snot been addressed by European leaders, and things like this will keep happening. Reagan came here and started screaming about communism and how good christianity is, despite the fact that he probably dislikes Islam, which is in large part a forgery of christianity. Oh, and a lot of insults I hope earns him the ban he has begged for.
 
hillelslovak87 said:
On free will, I have yet to hear it properly defined, and thus have not heard exactly how humans have it.
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We are not arguing free will here. Not sure why you are trying to spin it around here when it got nothing to do with the discussion.

Atheism is a rejection of faith. The lack of theism is the whole point of the word. However, I find the word atheism to be somewhat of a category error. Do you believe in Zeus or Thor? Presumably not. Is this a worldview, or simply a rejection of the obviously false? I wager you think the latter. Everyone is an atheist on every religion they dont believe in, what are known as atheists simply go one god further.
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You cant just change definition of atheism and expect everyone to agree on the new definition. I my self would also like to change definition of atheism to make better arguments but hey.. what can you do, lol.

The Russian Orthodox Church did great work to create the situation that led to World War 1. You have numerous genocides, like the Yugoslav wars, and you have massive famines, pogroms, persecutions and executions of minorities, plagues that ravaged Russia while the Church stifled legitimate science (much like the Catholic Church), and countless people who simply died due to poverty within a system that concentrated wealth and resources to the ruling powers, God consecrated all.
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Russian church was executing minorities and was somehow responsible for Yugoslavian genocide??? Well i dont know, maybe you know something i dont. The rest of your examples are very indirect and not concrete enough to build a house on.

Look at the militant "atheists" during the USSR era, you notice they engaged in heresy hunts. They were not interested in developing moral systems and ethics devoid of supernatural faith, they had a doctrine, enjoining them to usurp God's role with the Glorious leader. This does not sound like objective, fact based analysis or a real ethical framework devoid of faith.
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Oh no no no man. They were not "atheists" they were ATHEISTS. I am sure if you would tell them they were not they would have fucked you up, <45> they actually had an ethical framework, but it was not needed since Communism already had an ethical framework devoided of faith in a religious sense, pretty much atheistic ethics (i am not saying that there are no other atheistic ethics). Again you should educate yourself, google communist ethics or "Moral Code of the Builder of Communism" if you want something simpler. Now you can disagree on how objective and ethical, commie ethics were (i pretty much disagree too), but "that's just like your opinion man".

Anyway this thread is about Nice. So i am done with this discussion.

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My cousin was both in Nice and in St. Petersburg when attacks happened, he is one lucky bastard.

I think it is important to remind people of these attacks, so people would remain vigilant, careful and sober when it comes to politics.
 
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