HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: Mikel Evins <mikel@apple.com>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: who's the real God(tm)
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 13:09:33 -0700
Distribution: world
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA

In article <sbuckley.714782179@sfu.ca> you write:
>>Why does a god need to be worshiped at all?
>
>  :)  i should compile a faq with this as one of the top questions.  god
>needs nothing.  he deserves worship for creating us.  

Why is that?

>>Does an engineer need worship for creating the world's fastest supercomputer.
>>(I am an engineer, an although I did not create the word's fastest
>>supercomputer, I would not ask for worship if I did -- Just money :-)  ).
>
>  no an engineer doesn't deserve worship because the don't create everything
>out of nothing.  the analogy between humans creating things and god
>creating everything breaks down simply because we are not god, the creator.

What makes worship an appropriate behavior in the presence
of a being who creates something out of nothing? In addition,
what exacly does worship consist of? (Perhaps answering this
question will answer the others. If 'worship' turns out
to consist of expressing amazement, then I suppose it would
be appropriate upon discovering abeing who had created
everything out of nothing, supposing it is possible to
know that some being has done such a thing).

>>Suppose this god created everything there is as he claims (does that
>>include himself?).  What does this imply about his claim on my worship?  Does
>>time mean the same to him as to me?  Or does he perceive all of time
>>in one single mindview?  If he created everything, is he incapable of
>>creating it without earthquakes,famines, pestilences or does he send
>>these around every once in a while (mainly on poor third world countries)
>>to teach us a lesson?  If he created everything, has he lost control so
>>that now a random evolutionary pattern taken over, placing disorganized
>>craters on the moon, and the rise and fall of species over vast periods
>>of time on the earth.
>
>  these are really great questions which i could answer in the context of
>biblical description of the nature of god.  but to do so, we'd all have
>to accept for the sake of argument that god exists and is knowable through
>the bible, however recent experience shows that no one is willing to
>take on this premise for me to answer these questions without heaps of
>public and private flames.  i have answers to these questions from the
>bible and i'd be happy to respond to you privately.  but i'm not stupid
>enough to answer questions like these publicly again.

Why not just propose examples of reasons why such phenomena are
necessary, without referring to the bible? In fact, if the answers
to the questions are in the bible, then why not just post them.
Why bother mentioning that they come from the bible, if what
you want to do is avoid flames that arise from such mention?
From: LEMOINE@chemvx.tamu.edu (Brett G. Lemoine)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: faith vs. reason
Date: 25 Aug 92 23:08:20 GMT

It seems clear to me that there is no empirical evidence that requires a
divine being's existence. Whether the evidence at hand suggests a creator
is mostly a matter of opinion. It would seem then that logic and reason
cannot be (certainly have not yet been) used to convince a person to
believe in God when they do not. I feel safe in saying that many Christians
would agree with this statement.
 
So, leaving logic and reason, many theists appeal to 'faith'. My questions
are as follows:
 
1) What kind of a thing is 'faith' that we should accept as 'true' what faith
   tells us?
 
2) How are we to determine _what_ faith tells us? (for example, why does
   faith give us the judeo-christian God as opposed to Aphrodite?)
 
3) How can we determine whether a person is relying on 'faith' as opposed
   to "wishful thinking"?
 
In order to squelch any effort at side tracking this discussion to the
issue of what gives logic and reason validity not shared by faith, I'll
attempt to answer that question up front. The kinds of questions that
logic and reason legitimately apply to are usually testable. Experience
has shown that with true premises, and valid arguments, logic will
provide the same answers as physical expirimentation. Reason, I would
argue is a less strict use of the rules of logic. Since the rules are
not so precise, reason alone does, on occasion, fail, and should not
be treated as legitimate as logic. Faith, however, seems to be
indistinguishable from simple assertion. The kinds of questions usually
addressed by faith are typically untestable. Therefore it would seem that
unless someone can provide a distinction between faith and assertion that
there is no more reason to believe in an arguement on faith than there
would be to believe an unsupported assumption.
 
Anyone care to try and dissuade me from my conclusions?
 
}-IvArch->--------------------------Brett G. Lemoine-------------------->
}-Texas A&M University--------------Chemistry Department Programmer----->
}-Internet: lemoine@chemvx.tamu.edu-Bitnet: lemoine@tamchem------------->
}------"A person without a god is like a fish without a skateboard."---->
From: Stephen Buckley <sbuckley@sfu.ca>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Nouveau-animism (was Re: 4 religions)
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 22:28:50 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada

"John A. Johnson" writes:

>Stephen Buckley says:
>>
>>"John A. Johnson" writes:
>>
>>>As an atheist who would also describe himself as a pagan and a
>>>Taoist, I would add these two "religions" to the list of atheist-
>>>compatible religions.  My brand of paganism regards "gods" and
>>>"goddesses" as metaphors for the experience of nature; no personal
>>>God here.  Perhaps the ineffable Tao is a god-like concept, but one
>>>can only allude to it metaphorically, as in the Tao Teh Ching.
>>>In both cases, I would say that these "religions" suggest ways of
>>>relating to the natural world rather than to a spiritual being.
>>
>>  doesn't this then become a nouveau-animism?

>Sorry, I'm unfamiliar with the term "nouveau-animism." Care to explain?
>If it has anything to do with the belief that spirits pervade
>the natural universe, it does not describe me.  I respect,
>revere, and sometimes fear the forces I find in nature, but I
>I regard these forces as impersonal and natural.

  yeah, originally animism had ideas like the psychological consciousness
in what we unenlightenly call inanimate objects.  but when people couldn't
find vital tissue and organs in tennis balls, animistic philosophy evolved
and somewhere in north america in the last 50 years gleaned some from
first nations spiritual philosophies to emerge in a whole new version
of animism where now it reflects the natural forces of nature, gaia
stuff where there is an inherent spiritual essence [soul, if you will]
in everything [not a psychological consciousness--that'd be just silly
"my tennis ball feels hurt when i hit it"  :) ].  and it is a taoist
kinda thing whereby if we surf in harmony with the flow of the patterns
of nature and be in harmony with our carnal selves in relation to the
world, our lives will be less obstructed with unconstructive behaviour
and actions.  thus in acknowledging some kind of assertive power in nature,
we then act in harmony with it, all the way down to the spiritual level.

  in this perspective, god the creator is a primitive tribal custom that
is irrelevant to the actual workings of life as we see it and more 
importantly *feel* it in our world.  nouveau-animism.
From: Mikel Evins <mikel@apple.com>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Sunday Liquor Sales
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 13:19:09 -0700
Distribution: world
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA

In article <sbuckley.714782733@sfu.ca> you write:
>>Do you see the difference between influencing society by arguments and speech,
>>versus advocating changes in the law, which inevitably involves force at some
>>point?
>
>  and you're missing my point that i am not going to force people to believe
>what i want them to.  i can influence people and if the majority don't want
>work on sundays, laws will reflect that from a societal basis and society
>will enforce its law, not mine.  there's a real propensity to make my
>argument out to be totalitarian, but i think you're just over-reacting.

The issue isn't what the majority want to do (as in "if the majority 
don't want [to] work on sundays"), it's what the majority want
other people to do (as in "if the majority don't want [anybody else to]
work on sundays"). In theory, the U.S. constitution is supposed to
help prevent oppression of the minority by the majority by upholding
the right of each individual to do as he or she pleases so long as
it doesn't interfere with the rights of others. In what way would
my working on Sunday interfere with your rights? Do you perhaps
claim that you have a right to live in a country free of Sunday
workers?
From: Jonathan Egre' <jonathan@mantis.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Sunday Liquor Sales
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 16:02:58 BST
Distribution: world
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

Stephen Buckley <sbuckley@sfu.ca> writes:

>   the rules and laws in my community, probly just like in yours, indicate
> whether people are allowed to open stores on sunday--usually municipal by-law
> take care of this.  if most people didn't want to work on sundays we'd be
> electing politicians who would reflect that desire. 

This is a fallacy; I shall explain what I mean by the following analogy.

The vast majority of people do not want to work as refuse collectors 
(dustmen, trash collectors, whatever you call them in your part of the world).

So why is there no law prohibiting the collection of refuse/rubbish/trash?

--
Jonathan Egre' / jonathan@mantis.co.uk / jonathan_e@cix.compulink.co.uk      
                 Voice: +44 223 421094 / Fax: +44 223 421093
From: Stephen Buckley <sbuckley@sfu.ca>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Sunday Liquor Sales
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 22:56:43 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada

rlk@underprize.think.com (Robert Krawitz) writes:

>In article <sbuckley.714683799@sfu.ca> Stephen Buckley <sbuckley@sfu.ca> writes:

>   >Stephen Buckley writes:
>   >  [omit]
>   >>  again, i don't want to come out and prohibit sunday work.  this is how i
>   >>see it.  i'd like to first be able to express an opinion, give good reasons
>   >>why i feel we should not work on sunday and hope enough people in our culture
>   >>will agree and change the rules and laws.  

>   >Are you saying that the majority *does* have the right to impose their
>   >will on the minority for purely religous reasons?  Would it be okay if
>   >the majority decided there should be a law requiring attendance every
>   >week in a Christian church? (Or any church for that matter).  

>   well, no because that would go against people's religious freedom.

>And prohibitions against Sunday work *don't* violate people's religious
>freedom?  Try asking an observant Jew or Muslim or anyone else who
>doesn't observe a sabbath on Sunday about that.

  oops, you've misquoted me.  my response was to the hypothetical question
about attending a christian church.  the response was not to sunday work,
the rest of my paragraph was.
From: Mathemagician <bevans%carina.unm.edu@lynx.unm.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Why theism is widespread
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 09:01:01 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Society for the Preservation of E. coli

In article <sbuckley.714169566@sfu.ca> Stephen Buckley <sbuckley@sfu.ca> writes:
[on how many self-proclaimed Christians seem to know very little about
the book that is commonly considered a definition of Christianity]

>  these are just the kind of numbers i'm talking about.  my claim is that
>people think this is a christian culture [it's secular] and say the majority
>of people are christian, but the numbers indicate that most of those who
>claim to be christian don't even fit the biblical definition of christian.
>so the facts indicate that tho people say it's a christian culture, it's not.

Well, in light of this, might I make a revision?

Specifically, I take great issue with the phrase that this is a
secular culture.  While it is technically true that our culture isn't
populated by church-goers, to claim that this society isn't heavily
influenced by religion is plain false.

While we may not be a culture of Christians in any strict sense of the
word, we are most definitely a culture of theists who believe in a god
most accurately described as the Christian one.

The culture may not be extremely devout, but it does believe....

-- 
Brian Evans                |     "Bad mood, bad mood...Sure I'm in a bad mood!
bevans@carina.unm.edu      |      I haven't had sex...*EVER!*" -- Virgin Mary
From: Stephen Buckley <sbuckley@sfu.ca>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: who's the real God(tm)
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 22:42:57 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada

David Choweller <David.Choweller@lambada.oit.unc.edu> writes:

>i wrote:

>>  i do not believe in God(tm) because he brags and lacks humility like buddha.
>>god can be humble if he wants but does he not deserve to be glorified if
>>he created everything?  if not, why not?

>If he's omnipotent, it was no sweat for him to have created everything.
>As someone said, what's with God wanting to be glorified.  Is he that
>insecure?

  and you are free to think god's a jerk for thinking he deserves worship
and gratitude from those that he created.  everyone is free to reject
god for whatever reason--no matter how long, short, intelligent, stupid,
rational, irrational, ignorant, or intellectually-sophisticated.

---                          
     Stephen Buckley        /    the meaning of life is the answer
     sbuckley@sfu.ca       /      to God's question in the Bible:
   TrueNorthStrong&Free   /        
      1-800-REALITY      /    "What are you going to do with my Son?"
From: tony@mantis.co.uk (Tony Lezard)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Administrivia
Date: 2 Sep 92 10:17:22 GMT
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

Well, mathew has returned from holiday, and I'm about to go on
mine, so he's resuming moderation of this group and it's farewell
from me for three weeks from tomorrow. Bye!

--
Tony Lezard
 Ex-acting-moderator, alt.atheism.moderated
  tony@mantis.co.uk / tony%mantis.co.uk@uknet.ac.uk / arl10@phx.cam.ac.uk
From: bevans@carina.unm.edu (Mathemagician)
Subject: Re: Pythagorean Reform Church
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 92 11:37:01 GMT
Organization: Society for the Preservation of E. coli

In article <Bu0BxD.JG3@world.std.com> entropy@world.std.com (Lawrence C Foard) writes:
>I have a wonderful message to bring to the world!

>Last night the number 4 came to me in a dream and told me that I
>must bring the pythagorean Gospel to the world!

Ummm...obviously you are an unwashed heathen.

The Pythagoreans respected the divinity of the numbers 5 and 10, not 4.
The symbol for the Pythagoreans was the pentagram (a regular pentagon
with a regular five-pointed star drawn insides).  Too, the crossings
of diagonals split the lines into the golden section.

The number 10, or tetractys, was the holiest of all numbers for it
represented the universe (1 was the generator and the number of
reason, 2 is the first even (female) number and the number of opinion,
3 is the first odd (male) number and the number of harmony being
composed of unity (1) and diversity (2), 4 is the number of justice or
retribution indicating the squaring of accounts, 5 is the number of
marriage being the union of the first true male and female numbers, 6
is the number of creation, etc.)  A single point is the generator of
dimensions, two points determine a line of dimension one, three points
not on a line determine a triangle with area of dimension two, and
four points not in a plane determine a tetrahedron with volume of
dimension three; the sum of the numbers representing all dimensions,
therefore, is the number 10.

And while Greek mathematicians were often put off by irrational
numbers, they were more put off by inconstructable numbers.  The
square root of 2 is irrational, but you can construct it.  Pi on the
other hand....

-- 
Brian Evans                |     "Bad mood, bad mood...Sure I'm in a bad mood!
bevans@carina.unm.edu      |      I haven't had sex...*EVER!*" -- Virgin Mary
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik (Hacker))
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: FOR WHATEVER IT'S WORTH
Date: 23 Aug 92 23:41:12 GMT
Followup-To: alt.atheism
Organization: Apple

In article <1992Aug20.201052.21811@meaddata.com>, joyce@meaddata.com wrote:
> I have to admit, I am not here to convince you all that there is a
> God. There will always be arguments in people's minds for and against
> it, it's what people choose to believe. I just ask that you consider
> the person of Jesus Christ, the most loved and most hated person who
> ever lived, all because He claimed to be God. There are 3 possibilities to His
> claim, 1) He was not telling the truth and He knew it which makes Him
> a liar; 2) He was not telling the truth and He did not know it which
> makes Him a lunatic; and 3) He was telling the truth. 

Sigh. Please do some more critical thinking, there are *far* more options,
let's see:

4) He was misunderstood
5) His preachings were misinterpreted a long time later
6) His teachings were used in an totally other operation, like a creation
of a new religion
7) His teachings were too much oriented to the Jewish culture, so 
they were edited
8) He is a fiction character, either one totally other person, or 
a mix of various other Messiah-wannabes
9) He was a political person that used religion as a means to an end
10) He believed what he said, but realized when he died that this
all was false (back to reality).

...and so on. I just wanted to point out that the 3-point myth
is not sound at all. And if you want to play the game of logic,
you have to follow the rules of the game.

Cheers,
Kent
Xref: sparky alt.atheism:16451 news.answers:2761
From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,alt.satanism,talk.origins,alt.pagan
Subject: Pointer to Biblical history quiz.
Followup-To: poster
Date: 26 Aug 1992 18:58:44 -0500
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

-*----
I have reposted my (in)famous Biblical history quiz in 
talk.religion.misc.  You can find it by searching article
headers for the name "turpin".

Russell
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: LIFE GOES ON UNTIL YOU DIE
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
	<1992Aug25.164924.15706@sics.se> <17e862INNpd5@festus.ksu.ksu.edu>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 07:41:52 GMT

In article <17e862INNpd5@festus.ksu.ksu.edu> yohan@festus.ksu.ksu.edu 
(Jonathan W Newton) writes:

 >You're wrong.  What do you use as "evidence" in a purely philosophical
 >arena?

  OK, let me be more explicit. Your statement that "logical arguments can
act as legitimate evidence" was senseless in the context, in which it
was made, viz. as a response to my claim that

  belief in the power of pious utterances, whether Christian
  or rationalistic, to dispell the fear of death is poorly supported by the
  evidence.

  Evidence regarding whether or not people's fears are in fact dispelled
by pious utterances is obviously empirical.
From: ethridge@bnr.ca (Allen Ethridge)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Is atheism experimentally refutable?
Date: 1 Sep 92 16:31:06 GMT
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Richardson, Tx.

In article <1992Sep1.140456.22729@st-andrews.ac.uk> nrp@st-andrews.ac.uk (Norman R. Paterson) writes:
>> more likely, interesting, and amusing.
>I think you are drawing a false distinction between a belief and a lack of a belief.  That is, 
>I think you are distinguishing "I believe there is no god" from "I do not believe there is a 
>god."  But I don't think there is a distinction.  Each seems to imply the other.  For example, 
>But this is not the original question: what experimental evidence would refute atheism?
...
>
>-Norman

It's not a false distinction.  A lack of belief in something does not imply a
belief in the negation of that thing.  The negation of a belief in a thing
does not imply the belief in the negation of the thing.  Belief is an action.
The negation of an action on an object does not imply the action on the 
negation of the object.

Words are fun.

If i'm not running am i standing still?  If i'm not moving towards a tree am i
moving away from it?  If i'm not babbling nonsense am i speaking coherently?
If you don't know what atheism is can you try to refute it, or even discuss it
reasonably?
-- 
allen@well.sf.ca.us                Allen B. Ethridge
ethridge@bnr.ca                    Bell-Northern Research, Inc.
my opinions are my own             Richardson, Texas
From: jmt@sactoh0.sac.ca.us (Jon M. Taylor)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Fundamentalist Party...
Date: 23 Aug 92 06:38:01 GMT
Organization: Sacramento Public Access Unix

<torrie.714368449@Xenon.Stanford.EDU>
Followup-To: 
Distribution: alt
Organization: Sacramento Public Access Unix, Sacramento, Ca.
Keywords: 
 
In article <torrie.714368449@Xenon.Stanford.EDU> torrie@cs.stanford.edu
(Evan Torrie) writes:
>cosc16tt@menudo.uh.edu (Dennis Gray Jr.) writes:
>
>>evils.  I don't feel that personal freedoms are safe by casting a vote
>>for Bush, and yet, Clinton's economic policy (which I would ask you
>>not discuss here) scares the daylights out of me.  Which
>>leaves......... yeah...  not alot.  I can throw my vote away voting
>>for perhaps a libertarian, or just not bother to throw it at all.  At
>>this juncture I would opt for the latter were it not for congressional
>>elections (I am there voting I might as well punch something for the
>>presidential post).  So, what do you guys think?
>
>  Although I am not a citizen (and can't vote), I discuss this
>dilemma with my roommate, who shares your same concerns (as do I).
>His solution is an interesting one:  he's going to vote for 
>Clinton.  The reasoning is that Clinton is likely going to
>be fairly ineffectual as a president, and will not do TOO much
>damage to the economy in his four years.  Most importantly, 
>the blame for the economy will be placed at the feet of 
>the Democratic "socialist" policy, rather than at the (nominally)
>capitalistic policies of the Republicans.
>  By 1996, Bush will be long gone, and hopefully one of the more
>moderate western U.S. republicans (maybe Pete Wilson), who won't
>be blackmailed by the religious right, will landslide for
>the presidency.
>
 
    After what Wilson has done over the ridiculous budget crisis this
state has had for the past umpteen months, I wouldn't vote him for dog
catcher.  And, lest you think I'm being blindly anti-republican, I think
Willie Brown is a real idiot too.  The whole california legislature is.
 
Jon Taylor
jmt@sactoh0.sac.ca.us
-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon M. Taylor  jmt@sactoh0.sac.ca.us
"'Cause what the wold needs now, is another folk singer, like I need a
hole in my head." - _Teen Angst_, Cracker