Didn't read all of this, just skimmed through it, will check it out later. Anybody that dosen't fear god is goona be sorry tho, thats all I can tell you.

LMAO. Great blog. LOL.

I agree with your observations here Space. I often wonder why Christians feel they have to prove their beliefs are valid and then talk about faith. It strikes me that that the epistomological statement of faith freed one to go beyond the constraints of materialism. I love Dante for this very reason; however, I also enjoy the collection of poems, edited by Czeslaw Milosz, entitled  A Book of Luminous Things for the reason that it avoids anything metaphysical and stays material.  Yet it still reaches out for something that suffers from explanation. But I digress.

Of course, many Christians are not aware of more rational groups of Christians and various sects just as they are equally unaware of all other cultures and social norms outside of their own experience. Largely, this is true of most of humanity. There are and have been Christians who do not believe in the more fantastic stories in the bible such as the reincarnation and such. Many groups and sects have interpreted and understood many things in many ways within Christianity. Christians whom I have had experience with in the US generally reject anything but literal interpretations of the Bible; however, they presume their interpretations are indeed facts. Many people do not understand the Bible within the context of a tabula rasa; therefore, textural studies often are never studied. I always encourage Christians or others to read them. I always thought they are most interesting.

Many of these assertions within the blog post could have been said of most non-believers or anyother group and the arguments presented could have been applied as well. I do agree with a commentor that the post is an opinion but this is arbitrary.

I will say that there have been great religious thinkers. Augustine, St. Thomas, and many more. The thoughts of the Upanishads inspired German thinkers as well. I don't want to made some lugubrious list here. It would be unnecessary.

Also, I think that despite wether or not one is a believer the issue of metaphysics cannot be avoided for the philosopher. Even the abscence of the content betrays the unknown possiblity. Imagination is still desired by thinkers. Dreams are not real and yet they are real and can be real in the way that they are personal experience. Personal experience of the world is personal.

I would like to write more but dinner awaits.

Space, it is great to read you again.

Ian, you have not yet addressed any of my arguments.  To point out a flaw in an argument you can do one of either two things.  1) you can show that it is invalid (that the conclusion can be denied without denying the conjunction of the assertion of the premises) or 2) you can show that the argument is unsound (one of the premises is false). 

My arguments are clear and specific.  So general comments you might have against atheism are likely irrelevant if they don't address my specific arguments.

Ian writes:

"All reasonable things require some degree of faith, and faith without substance is stupid".  This claim contradicts itself.  Here is how.

A reasonable claim is grounded in reason or brute empirical fact.  Faith is believing something without a reason and so is the antithesis of reason. 

For example, when God asks Abraham to murder his child, Abraham had to have faith that this was God asking him (and not the Devil or his own imagination) and he had to have faith that whatever God wants is what he should do.  He had nothing more to go on to act on his faith.   He had no REASON to act one way rather than another.  In fact, he had reason to go AGAINST what he was asked to do, because common decency and morality is that you don't kill your own child.  Abraham likely loved his own child and did not want to kill him.

So this is the quintessential case of faith in the Bible, and it is clear that there is not a *sufficient* reason for killing your own son here.  And that's why it's 'faith'.  If there were a sufficient reason, then it would not be faith.  And just as Abraham believed, as a matter of Faith, that he should kill his own son, the 9/11 terrorists believe that God wanted them to bomb New York. 

Do you see the danger of 'faith'? 

Let me ask a simple question--wouldn't the world be better off if people didn't act on faith, but only acted on reason?  Wouldn't that have prevented 9/11, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, etc.?

Faith is diametrically opposed to reason.  If you have a reason for your 'faith', then it's NOT 'faith'.  If Abraham had known God would stop him from killing his own son, then he didn't have "faith' at all.  the only 'faith' is BLIND faith.  Faith is always a 'leap' of faith, because it 'leaps' outside the boundaries of reason.

You can't have it both ways, you can't have your cake and eat it too.  You can't praise faith, and still claim to be rational.  You can have your faith, but only by being irrational.

I will post the links for the time being and will have to get back to u on the objections on the weekend or early next week most likely as i have busy few days. Thanks for your patients.

http://www.gotquestions.org/is-God-evil.html

http://www.gotquestions.org/infidel.html

WWW.DISSENTFROMDARWIN.ORG

Now if anyone has any genuine questions they want to know, from at least a some what open mind set please feel free to send a message in the mean and i do my best to respond asap.

P.S. Atheists/Agnostics often misquote and take scripture out of context when addressing the issue and claims you make against the bible, because your not really looking for an answer, only a reason to not believe in God.

All reasonable things require some degree of faith, and faith without substance is stupid. If i simply believe anything i like without anything to give good grounds for it ( When you don't have an answer for it completely or cant prove everything empirically) i could believe and justify anything. I believe the bible and in God because there is substance to that belief and is rational, so the things i can't answer and that do require faith can be more easily accepted.

you agued with someone's comments after you deleted them so that the orignal information couldn't be viewed. pathetic

Ian writes:

"There is nothing irrational about my approach to Christianity.I looked into it well enough to see not every one who claims to be true is and i have solid evidences also to give me good reasons for my faith."

You have contradicted yourself.

IF you have "solid evidences" that give you "good reasons" for your "faith", then it is NOT FAITH that you have.  I don't have "faith" that I'm wearing shoes.  I can look down and see that I'm wearing shoes.  Believing what you do based on evidence and reasons is NOT faith.  It's just an ordinary attempt at knowledge, which is what normal people do all the time in the course of their lives.

"Faith", however, in the religious sense especially, is believing what you do in a way that is NOT based on evidence.  That is what makes faith so special and also what makes it irrational.  If you actually saw Jesus Christ perform miracles, die, and come back from the dead...well, you don't have "faith" that he's a special person, you just saw it with your own eyes.  the rest of us have to have 'faith' that it's true, "faith" that we have original sin (if you're catholic), "faith" that there's an afterlife, etc.

Either you have reasons for believing what you do, or you don't have reasons.

If you have reasons, then it is not faith (it's just an ordinary belief).  If you don't have reasons, then it's irrational. 

That is the dilemma you have.  Nothing you say or write or quote from other sources addresses the heart of my logical argument.

"Irrational" is not an insult or a sloppy term, it is a very precise technical term.  Circular arguments, such as appealing to the Bible as authority, is irrational.  Self-contradiction is irrational.   Having faith, in explicit denial of reason, is also irrational.

My blog post shows how all faith-based religions promote irrationality, and therefore open the door to all kinds of wacky beliefs and promote that people believe what they do based on EMOTION rather than REASON.  That opens the door to hatred and violence. 

Now if you would like to stay on the specific topics I address, then I welcome a response.  A response from YOU that stays on target to the issues. 

The argument I formulate is such that you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.  If you admit you have reasons for your beliefs, then you don't have 'faith'.  If you admit you have no reasons for your beliefs, then you admit to being "irrational.". 

That is your problem.

Ian,

I have deleted your comments because: 1) they are not your comments, you simply cut and pasted from other sources and 2) in doing so did not address my specific arguments.  You are welcome to post links to your favorite websites if you think they address some of the issues I raise, but it's a waste of space and irrelevant to put a list of hundreds of names of people. 

Ian,

Thank you for taking the time to make an attempt at a reply, unfortunately, almost all your comments dodge the real issues and *arguments* (yes, logical argument, not just spewing of opinion).

First off, you don't address the argument concerning the dilemma of being a hypocrite or a fanatic.  Are you DENYING that the major faith-based world religion founders were NOT fanatical and did NOT preach fanaticism?  YES or NO.  It's a clear question with clear logical implications

Secondly, you did not address the nature of the scientific issue that religiosity is inversely correlated with intelligence.  Instead, you list a bunch of names that does nothing to address the scientific facts.   You could just as easily list the names of famous scientists who were Nazis, or famous scientists who were murders, or famous scientists who were part of the KKK...it's all irrelevant to the point I made about the relation between intelligence and religiosity.

Thirdly, the bible only needs ONE example of a complete atrocity to be deemd uninspired by a benevolent God.  That's all it takes, and it's easy to find.

Take, for example, what the Bible says about women from St. Paul or what is says about gays.  Please restrict your discussion to those two topics in particular and show that the Bible does not support the murder of gays and show that the Bible does not support the subjugation of women.  You can quote all you want passages about love, peace, bla bla bla, but the task for you is to explain the passages about hate, murder, and subjecting women to violence and subjecting women to the authority of men.

If your comments were a college paper, I'd have to give them a "D" for not staying within the scope of the arguments, and for not identifying and addressing the arguments.  You went for quantity of comments instead of quality.]

The biggest problems you need to address is why anybody should have 'faith' in anything.  'Faith' as I clearly define in my article, as believing something WITHOUT a *reason*.  Science, and common sense rationality, is constituted by having REASONS for believing something.  Faith is NOT having a reason, and so that opens the door to all kinds of nonsense.  The lack of reason, ie, the lack of rationality, is what opens the door to letting blind emotion, especially hatred, dominate.  And that's what led to 9/11, genocide, and all the other atrocities in the name of 'God'.  IF you support a faith-based religion, then you support irrationality, and you are cousins (if not brothers) of the 9/11 terrorists, the Nazis, the Inquisitors, the Crusaders, the jihadists, etc.  You are all the same--you all deny rationality in the name of Faith.

THAT is the problem you need to address. 

Ian writes:

"First of all the towers u have pictured are not a result of Christianity they are off extremists of Muslims and do not reflect the majority who don't think such acts are justified."

I obviously know that the 9/11 bombers were not Christian.  And you obviously did not read my blog carefully enough to discern its thesis and the arguments and examples that substantiate that thesis, so let me clarify it for you here.

The thesis:  All faith-based religions oppose rationality and foster irrationality. 

Both Christianity and Islam are faith-based religions.

Both oppose rationality and foster irrationality.  I gave myriad historical examples and quotations from the Bible. 

In light of these examples, quotations and the fact that the leaders of these religions are all fanatics, it is clear that there are TWO kinds of religious followers of these religions: 1) fanatics, 2) hypocrites. 

So, yes, the Islamic terrorists who bombed 9/11 were not Christian and they were not 'mainstream' Muslims.  Of course.  But the 'mainstream' Christians and Muslims are HYPOCRITES, because they are not actually acting on the teachings of their religious texts, unlike the fanatics.  The 'mainstream' have watered-down defenses of 'faith' and, so, make acceptance of IRRATIONALITY.  It is just a matter of time and psycho-social pressure before members of the irrational mainstream religions gravitate towards the extremes, which are the religions' logical conclusion.  Those extremes lead to violence, anarchy, and make the world a crappy place.  IRRATIONALITY, in the form of 'faith', opens the door to *anything* and adds fuel to the fire of human EMOTION.  Religion, via irrationality, appeals to EMOTION, and those emotions foster HATE, and that HATE (blinded by all reason and guided by irrational faith) leads to VIOLENCE.  You can believe any old crap by having 'faith' in the crap.  Rationality, on the other hand, CONSTRAINS what you believe by restricting it to the FACTS and to logic (ie, non-contradiction, the contrapositive, recognition of valid logical structures, etc.).  Emotion is fine--it is a pleasure of being human and a natural product of our evolution--but what distinguishes human beings is our capacity to reflect rationally on all our surroundings and on ourselves, including our emotions.  Religious fanatical leaders--and many political leaders--use the vulnerability of our emotions to circumvent our rational checks-and-balances. The real enemy is not religion per se, but irrationality, and it just so happens that all faith-based religions add fuel to the fire of our irrational tendencies. 

It is the mainstream of hypocrites who make the world a safe-haven for the irrational extremists by defending, even nurturing, IRRATIONALITY (ie, 'faith').

Am I being clear now?  If I'm wrong in any of the historical examples, Bible quotations or arguments, then feel free to clear those up--all of them (and there are many more--the Bible is full of crap).  How is it that the God of the Bible does not HATE gays and encourage their bloody slaughter?  How does the God of the Bible not condone beating slaves?  How does the God of the Bible (or, more specifically, St.Paul) NOT hate women and subject them to inferior status to men?    Did you conveniently SKIP those parts of the Bible in Sunday school?   Or, as I suspect, are you just a hypocrite 'mainstream' believer who cherry-picks the 'good' parts of the bible, ignores the rest, and makes up your own religious mumbo-jumbo, rife with self-contradiction, circular appeal to 'faith' and the Bible, and an absolute renunciation of all reason?   What disaster or personal crisis in your life led you to believe such nonsense in the first place?  What emotions are interfering with your ability to think rationally?

HYPOCRITE or FANATIC.  Those are the two types of Western faith-based religious devotees.  Whichever you are, BOTH encourage irrationality, and that irrationality leads to 9/11, the bombing of abortion clinics, the KKK, the Nazis, pedophile Catholic priests, Israel-Palestine conflict, racism, sexism, genocide, etc.  The list goes on.  I have a partial solution to the problem of irrationality--get rid of all faith-based religions and replace it with RATIONALITY.  This was essentially an idea started in the Enlightenment in modern history, though there are few good ideas that the Ancient Greeks did not already have, in different varieties.  The basic humanist idea is that respect for each other is a natural result of rational thinking.  It's not good for me to try to kill you, or vice versa, so we should cooperate.  It's good to believe something based on evidence.  It's good to think carefully to research the facts.  It's good to question assumptions and not have blind 'faith', especially in crucial matters of life and death.

Clearly, I am in favor of rationality, and I think rationality is *good* (in fact, that is a natural conclusion from thinking rationality, observing the consequences of rational thinking, and observing the negative consequences of NOT thinking rationally).  Faith-based religions foster irrationality, which is BAD.  That is the difference between me and you, Ian.  You think IRRATIONALITY is GOOD, you perpetutate it with your religious beliefs, spread irrationality around the world like the disease that it is, and then you are surprised when the irrationality comes back to bite you in the butt, in the form of domestic and international terrorism, hate groups and other nonsense (ie, Creationism debates making American school children even stupider than they already are, the Catholic Church impeding Galileo and scientific progress, right-wing religious fanatics such as George Bush using 'God' as part of his 'policy', etc.) 

That irrationality is BAD is so patently obvious by looking at world history and the corrosive effects of religion on mankind that it is simply preposterous for anybody to argue to the contrary.  In fact, the only way to deny that obvious fact is to have 'faith' that it's wrong.   How ironic and unsurprising.

So continue Bible-banging, continue spreading the seed of irrationality, and continue making the world a crappy place. Quite frankly, I think the world has had enough terrorism of the body and mind for the past few thousand years.  The worst form of terrorism is the terrorism of the human intellect, and that is religion's true victim, like a priest raping a child, religion rapes your mind so that you cant' think straight. 

First of all the towers u have pictured are not a result of Christianity they are off extremists of Muslims and do not reflect the majority who don't think such acts are justified.

I will come back to you on ur mis understanding of the scrptures ok. Athiests such as yourself tend to read one line or 2 of a passage/s and mis quote it because your not open to understanding it, only justifying your stance and belief's.Your stance is understand able though. Please understand man kind kill each other with and without religous views and will use what ever excuse they can do to what they know they shouldn't.

P.S. My family didn't talk much about religion either, i looked into it while i was already and adult.

Thanks Woodshover.  But to me, it's not just about spewing an opinion, but about the progress of humanity and in preventing the positive harm to the progress caused by irrationality in general, specifically as it pertain to religion.  Ask any stem cell researcher in the US what religious irrationality does to impeded scientific progress.  Or go to any part of the world where disease and unwanted pregnancies proliferate--and you have organizations like the Catholic Church that oppose birth control.  Or of all people, the Mormons--whose actual religious teachings are racist--interfere with California politics to oppose the rights of gay partners to visit each other when dying in a hospital.  Irrationality makes the world a crappy place, and religion makes the world more irrational.  THAT is the argument.

I couldn't agree more. Why should atheists have to remain silent to avoid offending religious jerks who blab all they want?

Why don't you explain all the evil Bible quotes for us?  Why not show me where there is a flaw in the argument? 

Are you saying that using your BRAIN is vanity?  LOGIC is vanity?  You're just embarrassing yourself by quoting yet another dubious Bible passage.  Why should anybody believe anything in such an evil, awful, corrupt book? 

"Vanity" is not using your brain, pretending you know all the mysteries in the world from a corrupt, evil book. THAT is vanity.

Tek, do you think you are any LESS irrational than the 9/11 bombers?  Is your Christianity any less ungrounded in reason (ie, only grounded 'faith') than Al-Qaeda terrorists?