I know for a fact that Robert King (E-Watchman) was "You Know". He admitted it to me personally.
AlanF
Posts by AlanF
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6Was or Is Robert King "You Know" ? Does anyone know? Any Proof ?
by 987654321 incan anyone confirm that robert king (e-watchman) was "you know"?.
regarding these posts: .
http://libr75.8k.com/127803.html.
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41
Creationism hiding in plain sight
by FireNBandits ina friend pointed out to me that "theistic evolution" is, in essence, no different than intelligent design.
both postulate a creator that is behind creation.
both use the words "creation" and "creator.
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AlanF
What a fine post, FireNBandits! You've captured the essence of what makes agnostics and atheists and doubters of all sorts tick.
No doubt, though, your fine thoughts will be lost on those who would most benefit.
AlanF
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AlanF
Vinny, trotting out Einstein's beliefs do you absolutely no good. How can you be so stupid as not to realize this from the very quotations you've set forth? These quotations are nothing more than a collection of Einstein's understandable equivocations demanded from a man who understood all too clearly the societal ramifications of outright denying the Christian God within the Christian society that existed in early 20th century Western countries. A fair sample of Einstein's comments proves that your source is deliberately and maliciously misrepresenting Einstein:
You and your sources claim that there exists the personal God of the Christians, yet Einstein directly denied this:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Albert Einstein, in a letter March 24, 1954; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 43.
"The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve."
Albert Einstein in a letter to Beatrice Frohlich, December 17, 1952; Einstein Archive 59-797; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 217.
"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously."
Albert Einstein, 1947; from Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein Creator and Rebel, New York: New American Library, 1972, p. 95.
"The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously."
Albert Einstein, letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981.
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
Albert Einstein, upon being asked if he believed in God by Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, April 24, 1921, published in the New York Times, April 25, 1929; from Einstein: The Life and Times, Ronald W. Clark, New York: World Publishing Co., 1971, p. 413; also cited as a telegram to a Jewish newspaper, 1929, Einstein Archive 33-272, from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 204.
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty."
Albert Einstein, quoted in The New York Times obituary, April 19, 1955; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Thoughts, New York: Ballantine Books, 1996, p. 134.
"I cannot accept any concept of God based on the fear of life or the fear of death or blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him I would be a liar."
Albert Einstein; from Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times, New York: World Publishing Company, 1971, p. 622.
"During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favor by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes."
Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A 1934 Symposium published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941; from Einstein's Out of My Later Years, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970, pp. 26-29.
"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one."
Albert Einstein, to Guy H. Raner Jr., September 28, 1949; from Michael R. Gilmore, "Einstein's God: Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?," Skeptic, 1997, 5(2):64.
"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."
Albert Einstein, according to the testimony of Prince Hubertus of Lowenstein; as quoted by Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times, New York: World Publishing Company, 1971, p. 425.
"I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist."
Albert Einstein, to Guy H. Raner Jr., July 2, 1945, responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism; from Michael R. Gilmore, "Einstein's God: Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?," Skeptic, 1997, 5(2):62.
On the subject of morals, Einstein directly contradicts your and Perry's claim that morals must be dictated by the Christian God:
"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."
Albert Einstein in a letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 216.
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature."
Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, Secaucus, New Jersy: The Citadel Press, 1999, p. 5.
"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem--the most important of all human problems."
Albert Einstein, 1947; from Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein Creator and Rebel, New York: New American Library, 1972, p. 95.
"I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."
Albert Einstein, letter to a Baptist pastor in 1953; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 39.
"Why do you write to me ‘God should punish the English’? I have no close connection to either one or the other. I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him."
Albert Einstein, letter to Edgar Meyer, a Swiss colleague, January 2, 1915; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 201.
"A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees."
Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," in the New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930, pp. 3-4; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. 205-206.
"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God."
Albert Einstein; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 66.
On the existence of Jesus:
"It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished."
Albert Einstein; quoted in W. I. Hermanns, "A Talk with Einstein," October 1943, Einstein Archive 55-285; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 215.
Did Einstein believe in the Christian God or the Jewish God?
"His [Einstein] was not a life of prayer and worship. Yet he lived by a deep faith -- a faith not capabIe of rational foundation -- that there are laws of Nature to be discovered. His lifelong pursuit was to discover them. His realism and his optimism are illuminated by his remark: ‘Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not’ . . . When asked by a colleague what he meant by that, he replied: ‘Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse’"
Abraham Pais, Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford University Press, New York, 1982.
On Einstein's bottom line beliefs about God and the universe:
"However, Einstein's God was not the God of most other men. When he wrote of religion, as he often did in middle and later life, he tended to adopt the belief of Alice's Red Queen that "words mean what you want them to mean," and to clothe with different names what to more ordinary mortals -- and to most Jews -- looked like a variant of simple agnosticism. Replying in 1929 to a cabled inquiry from Rabbi Goldstein of New York, he said that he believed "in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exist, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men." And it is claimed that years later, asked by Ben-Gurion whether he believed in God, "even he, with his great formula about energy and mass, agreed that there must be something behind the energy." No doubt. But much of Einstein's writing gives the impression of belief in a God even more intangible and impersonal than a celestial machine minder, running the universe with indisputable authority and expert touch. Instead, Einstein's God appears as the physical world itself, with its infinitely marvelous structure operating at atomic level with the beauty of a craftsman's wristwatch, and at stellar level with the majesty of a massive cyclotron. This was belief enough. It grew early and rooted deep. Only later was it dignified by the title of cosmic religion, a phrase which gave plausible respectability to the views of a man who did not believe in a life after death and who felt that if virtue paid off in the earthly one, then this was the result of cause and effect rather than celestial reward. Einstein's God thus stood for an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who at the courage, imagination, and persistence to go on searching for them. It was to this past which he began to turn his mind soon after the age of twelve. The rest of his life everything else was to seem almost trivial by comparison."
Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times, New York: World Publishing, 1971, pp. 19-20.
The above material is taken from the website http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_einstein.html . A good deal more such material can easily be found by googling something like "einstein god".
So, Vinny, what you've quoted is the usual bullshit misrepresentations from Fundamentalists -- a gross distortion of the truth, aided by stereotypical misquotations, misrepresentations and half-truths of the kind that would do the Watchtower Society proud.
Are you proud of yourself? Are you proud that you've been so taken in by your braindead Fundy leaders? Are you still proud that you, having been so thorougly deceived, much like Eve, set forth such lies?
Sadly, most likely you are. Such is the Fundy mindset. If you can call it a mindset.
AlanF
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17
Letter to my jw friends
by done4good inafter reading about dawg's" lay it on the line" latter, i decided to do the same.
i never been one for keeping my thoughts to myself, so it was about time.
if you get time, take a look, (it's a bit long).. j. hello everyone,.
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AlanF
Very good, Jason!
Of course, better than 9 out 10 of the people you send this to will quickly have their eyes glaze over and drop dead mentally.
AlanF
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Sexual Morality In The Old Testament Differs From That In The New Testament
by AlanF inconservative christians like the jehovah's witnesses often claim that, like the new testament, the old testament forbids all sexual relations outside marriage, including relations between unmarried people.
that is not quite true.
to see that patriarchal and israelite culture adhered to a different standard, we must first understand just how the old testament treats marriage, sexuality and related items.. the old testament view of women as property.
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AlanF
Thanks for the clarifications, Narkissos.
Zagor, I've sometimes wondered the same thing about Sarah's morality.
AlanF
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God could NEVER convince me he exists. Weird...
by AlmostAtheist init just dawned on me, and i'm really a little put out over it.
i was reading alanf's comments about vinny and his willingness to sacrifice children if god told him to.
alan suggested any fundamentalist christian should agree he would, and vinny did in fact agree.
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AlanF
LittleToe wrote:
: That's a slippery-slope fallacy. What are the odds that if God manifested Himself He would instantly command you to go murder someone? That aint exactly the kind of subject for first introductions, now, is it?
I'm not sure just which of AlmostAtheist's statements you're calling a "slippery-slope fallacy", LittleToe. He's questioning what his reaction might be if God (or perhaps, an entity pretending to be God) contacted him in some unspecified manner. Hopefully, any such introduction would be non-threatening, because surely such a powerful entity would understand such issues, and understand that an immediate demand to murder someone would almost certainly have the opposite effect from what he wanted. I think that such an entity might even want to see how a person would react to such a murderous demand, and judge the person's moral sense based on his reaction to a command to do something vile rather than on his reaction to blindly obey some powerful entity.
The question of what someone might do if such a powerful entity eventually asked him, in all seriousness, to do something like torture and kill babies for fun would come up ony after that entity established a great deal of trust in himself.
Biblically, this business of killing innocents is not mere supposition, since there are quite a number of OT examples where God demanded or smiled upon such things.
AlanF
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AlanF
Vinny, you keep bringing up issues that everyone knows are unanswerable with present knowledge, and continue making the same mistakes. Here's a little summary:
No one knows for certain how the universe originated.
No one knows if our local universe popped into being because it was created by some higher intelligence, because the underlying laws are part of some much larger, possibly infinite, macro-cosmic universe that has always existed, or because of some completely unknown mechanism.
No one knows if our local universe is all that was, is and ever will be.
No one knows if there is such a thing as a macro-cosmic universe infinite in time and space.
No one knows if there is such a thing as a supremely intelligent creator infinite in time and space.
If you can present proof or disproof of any of these things, then do so.
Your blustering is simply stupid, and tends to confirm the supposition of atheists that Fundamentalists are braindead morons incapable of rational thought.
Your blustering is unable to distinguish between any number of possible intelligent creative forces, whether that be the Christian God, Allah, Vishnu, Thor or Tinker Bell.
But I completely agree with Abaddon, that you and Perry, by your bluster and avoidance of real argument, your transparent evasions and even out and out lying, are an embarassment to many other Christians and that, as a result, this thread is quite educational. In this, you're much like almost all of the JW apologists who have come and gone from this forum.
Abaddon, I disagree that Vinny is an utter poltroon. After all, he did admit to me that he would gladly kill and torture babies for fun if his God said he should. That takes courage, of a sort.
AlanF
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AlanF
Good Lord, TopHat! Are you really as stupid as your posts make you out to be? Let's see why I ask.
After posing a serious question to Perry and seeing him ignore it several times, I challenged Vinny with the same one, based entirely on Perry's 'reasoning' on the subject of naturalism and morality:
::: Vinny, if God said that it's fun to torture babies, and morally right to do so, and it was pleasing to him for you to do it, would you?
Vinny eventually answered:
:: If God asked me to do something that I thought was wrong, would I do it anyway? That was a part of your question I missed. My answer is YES. Abraham was willing to offer his own son and had the knife in motion. Would you do the same alan f? His account is a beautiful example of faith in the Creator. He was called faithful by God Himself for putting his trust in God completely. I would like to hope I would be like Abraham.
Clearly, Vinny understood the import of my question, and seems to have answered truthfully and as I would expect any faithful Fundamentalist to do. Thus, my comment:
:: Oh, and Vinny, thanks for giving an answer to the question that Perry is too embarrassed to answer: you most certainly would enjoy torturing babies if God said it was right and that you should do it.
Completely missing all of the above, as is your wont, you said:
: Alan, YOU, my dear fellow NEED serious HELP!.....DO IT has soon a possible
So, TopHat, given the above, is my tentative conclusion that, based on your comments, you seem to be extremely stupid, correct? If not, why not?
Of course, I know very well that you're going to respond with something so inane that I'd be hard put to invent it.
AlanF
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Sexual Morality In The Old Testament Differs From That In The New Testament
by AlanF inconservative christians like the jehovah's witnesses often claim that, like the new testament, the old testament forbids all sexual relations outside marriage, including relations between unmarried people.
that is not quite true.
to see that patriarchal and israelite culture adhered to a different standard, we must first understand just how the old testament treats marriage, sexuality and related items.. the old testament view of women as property.
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AlanF
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
Narkissos, you made some interesting points about the possibility of "sacred" sex versus "unclean" sex, and about how the priestly outlook on sex may have evolved from the "dark side" of earlier cultural views. I don't know that we'll ever know, but then, there's a lot about the ancient world we'll never know. What we do know is that there is a good deal of similarity between the Canaanite god Baal and the Israelite god El, and of course that extends to the later Yahweh. Since the Canaanites were heavy into sacred prostitution, your speculation is on firm ground.
Just to clarify, my treatment of the OT corpus as a consistent whole is due to the purpose of the article. About six years ago some JWs and others on this forum were claiming that OT and NT sexual morality was identical, and that women were treated with great respect by worshipers of Yahweh both in OT and NT times, just as some recent Fundamentalist apologists having been doing on this board. I wrote the article to disprove these false claims. To do this, I took their own stance, that the OT is self-consistent, and merely reported what it says.
I appreciate your comments about "porneia" and such. Clearly, what some NT writers seem to have had in mind is not necessarily what either the OT writers or moderns Christians have in mind.
You wrote:
: But the biggest misunderstanding of many (especially American) conservative Christians, imo, is to refer to Jesus or Paul as advocates of marriage and family institutions whereas the texts suggest the very opposite.
Please expand on that.
yaddayadda said:
: Hmmm...and your point is?
See my comments to Narkissos.
MariAuet said:
: Are you sure that was only back then, I felt like prperty all along as if there was a price tag hanging around my neck. Which also meant I could be written off when I didn't serve the purpose any more or didn't add enough of margin to my husband.
All Christian Fundamentalists seem to hold to the ancient notion that women are inferior, especially based on NT comments such as that women are not permitted to teach, and that women cannot hold positions of authority because "Eve was deceived but Adam was not". JWs are prime examples of this, but with the added twist that they almost consciously emulate many OT cultural mores, even more than is justified by reference only to the NT.
Zack and gumby, your comments resonate with me. When one approaches the OT and NT with modern eyes rather than the blinders imposed by Fundamentalism, one sees clearly that the religious laws and practices largely reflected pre-existing and slowly evolving cultural norms and were simply codifications of them. But this is how religions generally work after they become adopted by the majority in a culture. Religion becomes the handmaiden of the rulers to keep the populace in line.
AlanF
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AlanF
Do keep it coming Vinny! You're far better at convincing people to avoid Christianity and other such religions than Richard Dawkins himself.
At least you have the balls to try to stand up for your silly belief system by attempting to answer hard questions, unlike Perry.
You attempted to answer my challenge about God enjoying hearing a psalm about his servants reveling in killing babies. But of course, you had to misrepresent the situation of the Psalmist to do so, by giving an incomplete picture. So let's review what the Bible actually says.
The Jews of the southern kingdom had offended Yahweh by their idolatry and other evil practices. So Yahweh brought the Babylonians upon them as punishment and destroyed their nation along with many people, allowing a remnant of Jews to become captives in Babylon. Psalm 137 was apparently written by an exile who had recently returned to Zion after Cyrus released the Jews from captivity. Psalm 137:7-9 is a call for retribution on Edom and Babylon:
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destructionn, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us -- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. (Psalm 137:8-9; NIV)
Now, how much sense does it make for a servant of Yahweh to call for retribution against the very instrument that Yahweh himself had used to punish him and his fellow sinners? None. It's completely nonsensical. It's immoral as well, because the small children of the Babylonians and Edomites had done nothing to deserve being smashed against rocks. The fact that you claim that this is good and proper shows your complete lack of a moral sense. Indeed, your morality is nothing more than blind obedience to someone you think arbitrarily dictates morality.
But of course, we know quite well that lack of innate morality characterizes Fundamentalist Christians and a great many other sorts as well. This lack is not due to a genetic defect, but because whatever genetically (and what would normally be absorbed culturally) based morality might have been there has be trained out of them. The disgusting Crusades practiced by the Catholic Church are a case in point. Other examples abound.
So Vinny has clearly indicated that he would participate in similar warring against "God's enemies" if he thought that God had told him to. He would even smash babies against rocks. This is what makes such Fundamentalists so dangerous to modern society, despite their self-righteous claims to being the moral examples of the world.
Oh, and Vinny, thanks for giving an answer to the question that Perry is too embarrassed to answer: you most certainly would enjoy torturing babies if God said it was right and that you should do it.
AlanF