by parakeet 70 Replies latest jw friends
shamus: An example: Everyone who believes in religion is just like the poster here named Perry and his bird.
Hey, HEY! No insults here! Perry's bird is an African Grey parrot and among the smartest of all birds. Don't be lumping the parrot in with a twit like Perry!
shamus: Did I mention how much peeing out the crack stones hurt? My eurethra!!! OOOOOH!
Poor twitching monkey baby! And a good example of your statement that "we can say things on this board that we would never say in public."
Well good god,
Perry's bird must have had a lobotomy or something. Poor thing... someone ought to rescue it. Give him a budgee or something.
You want to talk about a trip - the horse tranquilizers... whew! Being atheist and all, I'll do anything for a buzz. 
Terry: What you are talking about (above quote) is other people framing an issue so they can attack it. Believers who are apologists are very strong on strawman fallacy. They set up an Atheist in a phoney way and then attack what they themselves set up.
My intent is not to set up a strawman. My intent is to encourage those Christians who insist atheism is a faith to examine their reasons for making that claim and to provide sensible answers. Religion has sacred texts, parables, dogma, clergy, ritual, and faith. I want them to prove their claim by describing what the equivalent is for atheists.
I don't care about ID and their beliefs. I want to know, sincerely, what they think atheistic religion entails.
Atheism is not belief. It is disbelief. This should be "duh"!
It should be, but it isn't.
Disbelieving Santa Claus is not a religious belief. It doesn't have tenets and practices. There is no right way and wrong way to disbelieve Santa Claus. See how silly that is?
According to the reasoning of some Christians, they would claim we have faith that Santa does not exist. I see the silliness, but they do not.
You are concerned with RIGHT BEHAVIOR.
That was a ploy to get those particular Christians thinking.
May I humbly suggest you grab a copy of Mortimer J. Adler's TEN PHILOSOPHICAL MISTAKES.
I'll download it on my Kindle today. Always looking for more thought-provoking reads. Thanks.
This has been a good exchange of thought, no faith intended. Existentialism aside, a good whack at co-adhesion has surfaced.
Shamus: ......Kiss me!
I didn't realize until reading other threads with your comments on them that kissing the monkey is a hallowed tradition. (BTW, your avatar looks more like a baby chimp than a monkey).
So here goes -- remember, I'm a parakeet with a sharp beak. This may hurt, but probably not as bad as passing that crack stone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po7XWitwZ3I
How dare you call me a baby!!
Yowza. Gotta respect those chimps, babies or not.
And gotta respect that beak. Hurts like a bugger!
Imagine a large slab of solid rock. Over time, rain and wind erode a small crack in it. One day a seed is blown into the crack and there is just enough rock dust, water, and sunlight to allow it to sprout and grow, eventually growing into a great tree and splitting the rock.
Things happen without conscious design. Perhaps the earth wasn't chosen because of its unique and advantageous location for life. Maybe life happened because the earth, like the rock and the seed, just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Millions of years from now, maybe earth will be as barren as Mars is now, and Venus will be pulsing with life. Who knows for sure?
Earth will be barren at some point because the sun will likely become a red giant and consume the inner planets and we will once again become the stuff stars are made of. Perhaps it will go supernova instead and blow our planet to lil bits, scattering whatever life that may still exist on lil frozen rocks throughout the local arm of the Milky Way. Perhaps one of these might seed another world in another millenia. Perhaps not.
It is obvious that this planet is in the right place with all the right variables set to allow the emergence of life and in our own solar system, it is only one of 9/10/11/12/?? planets that can support life. How many stars exist in the universe? How many of those stars have a dozen or so planets? How many are barren? I would reason that the vast majority of them are and cannot support life (as we know it) but that of the innumerable worlds out there, perhaps the odds are that there might exist another one with the same conditions and criteria that would allow a measure of a chance for life, likely radically different in form and function than our own. When the odds that life emerging elsewhere are astronomical, consider the fact that you are considering the universe. Just because the odds are stacked against a possibility, that doesn't make it impossible.
In other words, if the odds that lighting will strike the same place twice are one in a billion, well, how many times might it happen if you allow it to strike a billion trillion times?
There is the Drake equation to consider,..
Shamus - I have NEVER seen that chimp video, or even heard of it! Unreal! On another note, I like that you don't discriminate about generalizing believers and non-believers... Twits all:)
Gladiator - Thank you for your comments on my post. I also dislike being labeled, simply because of all the generalizations that can be made under that label; hence the reason I feel the need to add an explanation to calling myself a Christian. Not that I claim to be unique in this, since many others do the same thing. Or even right. Its just where I am in my journey.
Parakeet - I appreciate that you have respected my belief in return. I'm uncomfortable with the 'rare/enlightened' compliment, since I think there are many more sincere and faithful Christians than me who do respect the rights of someone else's belief, or lack thereof. But thank you anyway.
Jaguarbass - I don't think we need to argue the existence of God, although I certainly enter into debates as the occasions arise. But He exists, whether we or others believe in him or not. Try not to be discouraged, take a breather, and trust that He knows what He is doing.
