HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dabrowsk@parc.xerox.com (Jarek Dabrowski)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: LIFE GOES ON UNTIL YOU DIE
Date: 27 Aug 92 20:22:50 GMT
Organization: Xerox PARC

In <1992Aug27.150643.21586@ccs.QueensU.CA> Colleen Davis (Dexter) wrote:

-Derek John:
>> If youre like me and believe that death means the total extinction
>> of consciousness how do you cope with it? [...] I am going to cease 
>> to exist in the most final and irreversible sense [...]
-Colleen Davis:
>It's going to happen and that's all there is to it. [...] You might
>as well be afraid of the sun coming up in the morning. 
>
Especially when you are lost in Sahara =:-(. I think that the natural or 
inevitable character of death is not a very convincing argument. 

Still, there's no reason to be afraid of CEASING TO EXIST. Why should
the knowledge that this will happen cause any discomfort? There will be
things you will not experience, and that's all. But there WERE things
which you DID NOT experience and there ARE things you DO NOT experience;
does this knowledge trouble you, John? The only reasons for anxiety I
can think of are: the very process of dying and the reaction of your
relatives and friends to your death. But that's another story, isn't it?

-Colleen Davis:
>This is the biggest, most amazing life you will ever lead.  It is
>religion that reduces life to a triviality, since its main thrust is
>that the only purpose of this life is to earn a spot in heaven.
>
Neither atheism nor religion reduce life to triviality. The purpose of
life is simply DIFFERENT for an atheist and for a theist. Indeed, an
atheist may think that theists follow a road to nowhere and that they
miss the real purpose of life; a theist may think just the opposite. To
settle this issue we would have to prove the existence or non-existence
of God... So I suggest we simply agree that theists and atheists alike
can find a good purpose of their life, ie. a purpose they are satisfied
with. I also suggest that you focus on what this purpose can be for an
atheist, without making excursions against the other party. 


Best wishes of a long and happy life,
                                      Jarek
------------------------------------------------------
 .-----.      Jarek_Dabrowski@Parc.xerox.com         
 `-> <-'    Jarek(u)Dabrowski@Parc.xerox.com         
I WANT DAN BREDY BACK TO THE NET
From: graham@maths.su.oz.au (Graham Matthews)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: LIFE GOES ON UNTIL YOU DIE
Date: 30 Aug 92 04:36:55 GMT
Organization: School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney

(Pete Yadlowsky) writes:
>Ever looked at [life]? I mean, pulled your nose out of the books and 
>looked at it? What _isn't_ marvelously complex about it? Are you serious?
>Graham Matthews writes
>Pete you may be confusing variety with complexity. Think about it!
(Pete Yadlowsky) writes:
>Something capable of producing the variety we see in life would have
>to be fairly complex, if not in its components, at least in its
>operation. 

Not at all. This is a standard pseudo-scientific fallacy (perhaps even
a standard scientific fallacy), that to the more complex a system the more
complex its underlying mechanisms are. This is just not try. A very
simple mechanism like random mutation or recursion can make very complex
systems.

graham
--
Graham Matthews                 And it's true we are immune
Pure Math, Uni.Sydney, Oz       When fact is fiction and T.V. is reality
graham@maths.su.oz.au
From: pmy@vivaldi.acc.virginia.edu (Pete Yadlowsky)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Reductionism, etc (was LIFE GOES ON)
Date: 28 Aug 92 16:38:22 GMT
Organization: University of Virginia

Dave Sill writes

>>I see no rationality in it whatever. How can one agree, on the one
>>hand, that our powers of perception are limited, and, on the other,
>>that they are nevertheless capable of acquiring perfect knowledge?

>One doesn't need perfect perception to acquire reliable information.

Well, how reliable is "reliable"? My beef with the reductionists is
that they want to claim _absolute_ knowledge through science. Therein
lies the conceit. Reliability is relative, and isn't really the
issue. 

>perception plays no part in the mental process of applying logic to
>abstractions.

But perception does play a part in gathering the data that those
processes operate on. If you start with distorted data, what kind of
conclusions are you going to deduce? And is logic infallible in its
style of analysis and synthesis? How might you know?  

>So atheists have faith in their perceptions/beliefs, just like theists.  The
>difference lies in the strength of the link between their perceptions and  
>the beliefs derived from them.

I'm not a theist, but I think this too is debatable. The strength of
the link is likely to be a personal thing, and thus very difficult to
test. 

--
Peter M. Yadlowsky              |  Wake! The sky is light!
Academic Computing Center       | Let us to the Net again...
University of Virginia          |    Companion keyboard.
pmy@Virginia.EDU                |                      - after Basho
From: bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Atheism and religion
Keywords: newspaper article
Date: 2 Sep 92 03:58:22 GMT
Reply-To: bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart)
Organization: Citicorp+TTI

In article <1992Sep1.020152.13457@menudo.uh.edu>,
mcbryde@navier.math.uh.edu (Jack Mcbryde) writes:
> In article <1992Sep1.011105.9498@ttinews.tti.com>
bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart) writes:
> 
> [stuff which doesn't distinguish between atheism and agnosticism deleted
> along with stuff that can't distinguish between disbelief and non-belief]
> 
> note the followup line

Don't jerk my chain, Christaholic.  I know the difference between
atheism and agnosticism AND the difference between disbelief and
non-belief; neither is relevant to what I wrote.  In fact, disbelief is
a perfectly reasonable reaction to unsubstantiated claims about anything
and DOES NOT imply religious dogma on the part of the disbeliever. 
Disbelief, like nonbelief, may be converted to belief if sufficiently
persuasive evidence becomes available.


The more outrageous or counterintuitive the claim in question, the more
reasonable it is to disbelieve outright in the absence of supporting
evidence.  "Non-belief," when it's distinct from "disbelief," means
"neither accepting nor rejecting the claim."  Sometimes, it's just plain
stupid and uncritical to adopt such a posture without a shred of support.

If I claim to have Elvis in my spare bedroom, would you consider
yourself a "nonbeliever" or a "disbeliever?"  Or would you, in fact, be
so gullible as to believe it on just my say-so?  Would you consider
outright disbelief of such a fantastic claim to be "dogmatic" or
"religious," or would it merely be sensible considering the facts and
circumstances?

As for my .sig line...take it as personally as seems necessary and
appropriate to you.

---------

A fanatic is someone who does what he knows that God would do if God knew the
facts of the case.

Some mailers apparently munge my address; you might have to use
bsmart@bsmart.tti.com -- or if that fails, fall back to
72027.3210@compuserve.com.  Ain't UNIX grand?
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
From: bevans@carina.unm.edu (Mathemagician)
Subject: Re: god is not relevant
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 92 11:19:19 GMT
Organization: Society for the Preservation of E. coli

In article <1992Sep02.193850.1579@bnr.ca> ethridge@bnr.ca (Allen Ethridge) writes:
>Now, is it reasonable to call oneself an "atheist" if one's position is that
>god is not relevant?  I don't think that "agnostic" is correct, since if god
>is not relevant then the question of god's existence is also not relevant.
>Is this atheism, and if not then what is it?

You've come across a problem that a friend and I have also found.
Neither of us believe in the supernatural...but we also feel that even
if god did exist, it really wouldn't mean much to us if things didn't
change around us.  That is, unless god comes down, proves to us that
he's god, and tells us that he's going to do horrible things to us
unless we convert, we wouldn't change our behaviour (well, I can't
speak too much for her, but that is the basic jist I get from her and
is pretty much what I feel.)

We also find that the word "atheist" comes with way too much emotional
baggage for the world at large.

Thus, we have adopted two other phrases for dealing with others:

NRP (which stands for "No Religious Preference")
Non-theist

We tend to use "non-theist" more often as it describes our position in
a more active sense.  We have no theism.  God is, given the way our
lives work and what we know about the universe, irrelevant.  We have
seen that believing in god has no discernable effect upon life, so
there is no reason to concern ourselves about it.  Or, depending on
how you might look at it, god is irrelevant.

-- 
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: rmg53668@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Ryan M. Grant)
Subject: Re: Reply to Gregg Skinner -- Christians and the Law
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 22:00:37 GMT

jbrown@doc.bmd.trw.com writes:

>    The moral standard taught in the Bible is like a solid pier that
>    one can tie one's "boat" (life) to.  With a "short rope"(careful
>    interpretation of the standard) tied to the "pier" (moral standard),
>    one will not drift (in a moral sense) very far from the standard.

So who is to say that those are not just the moral standards of a certain time
(when the Bible was written) and that you may have fixed your boat on a pretty
high pier but not necessarially the highest ever.  Your boat could be pulled
under water if the tides rise higher, or the rope could break.  Morals have 
already improved since the Bible.  We no longer have slavery.  Women are
considered people too.  I base my morals on what I alone think is right, due
to my experience with other people.  I am prepared to float with the tide if
I need to to survive.  Are you?  Don't forget, that short rope leaves you
little leeway for tidal variance.  Maybe this does not worry you because you
are in a sheltered harbor, with little or no tides and waves, cut off from
the great open sea of opportunities and knowledge.

				Your Choice.
				- Ryan Grant
From: mehawk@agora.rain.com (Michael Sandy)
Subject: Re: LORD, LIAR, OR LUNATIC?
Organization: Open Communications Forum
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 06:23:37 GMT

Er...  Why does "Jesus lied, knowingly" make it impossible for him to
be a great moral teacher?  Socrates and Plato were unquestionably great
philosophical figures and _advocated_ lying.  Plato even advocated
lying as a method of keeping the classes in line.

So he lied.  Why does that make him a Demon?  How do you explain the
moral wrongness of lying without resorting to God or to Utilitarianism?

Why are "Lord", "Liar" and "Lunatic" taken to be mutually exclusive?  
God, if he Created Everything is manifestly capable of creating liars
and lunatics, why not create Jesus Christ, the Divine Lunatic?

Did JC ever claim to be the last Prophet?  The last Teacher?  What is
so scary about the belief that we may have grown beyond his teachings?

We no longer say things are right because, God, Father or the Government
said they were.  We don't take "just following orders" as an excuse for
a bankrupt religion.  A parent tells a child, "Do it because I told
you to."  or  "Do it or I'll punish you."

A Good Parent, in my Exalted Opinion, is one who says, "This is the right
thing to do for X, Y and Z reasons.  On some issues you may have to learn
for yourself that Mom and Dad were right all along.  You might even find
we were right for our time but not yours.  This is my experience, draw what
lessons you can from it."

Christianity, as far as I can tell, says, "Do it because God tells us to."
or "Do it or God will punish you."

I think that being recognized 2,000 years later as a Great Human Moral
Teacher is a greater kudo than being remembered as a son of a god.
Aeneas, Achilles, Sigurd, and many others are remembered as sons of
gods.  JC, Confucius, Socrates, Buddha are all recognized as Great
Human Moral Teachers and are much better company./



-- 
Michael Sandy
mehawk@agora.rain.com
michaels@m2xenix.psg.com
"The above does not reflect the views of any organization."
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
From: bevans@carina.unm.edu (Mathemagician)
Subject: Re: The Rock
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 92 08:49:33 GMT
Organization: Society for the Preservation of E. coli

In article <92241.194550EXG106@psuvm.psu.edu> <EXG106@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>Just curious here......
>Has anyone ever heard of "The rock argument"?
[can god make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it?]

This is an *old* argument people have posited to theists in an attempt
to make them admit that god is not omni-powerful.

A common response is that god wouldn't do that or that the question
isn't answerable since god is above mortal logic.

And since it is such an old argument, I doubt you'll get much of a
response.

-- 
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: Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill)
Subject: Re: Contents of the 'Death Sea Scrolls': claim by Australian scientist
Organization: University of Tasmania (Australia)
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 01:24:58 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.102721.89903@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>, che755v@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au writes:

> This sounds to me like a report relating to Barbara Thiering's ideas
> and her book "Jesus the Man".  she is not a scientist, she is a
> theologian.  It seems to be quite popular to believe that there is
> a conspiracy surrounding the Scrolls because they contain "damning
> evidence" against Christianity and Judaism.  I cannot assert that
> this is not the case but I have heard anecdotal evidence that such
> a belief is largely unfounded.  (Perhaps Tim O'Neill could help
> here??)  Thiering's contention is that if you assume the NT was
> written by the Qumran community (an assumption she justifies with
> a revised dating of the scrolls and a few "key phrases") then it
> is actually a code which she claims to have "broken" and thus out
> pops the story you mention above.

That about sums it up pretty well Peter. Her entire thesis rests on 
the idea that the scrolls were written about two hundred years earlier
than they seem to have been. Thiering has some flawed arguments against
the accepted paleographical dating, some circular arguments against the
dating from historical references in the scrolls and she handles the
recent carbon dating of the scrolls (which confirms the consensus
position and trashes her ideas) by simply ignoring it. She is a lady
of little or no credibility.

Jacqueline Cote <A410JACQ@HASARA11.BITNET> writes:

>Gee whiz Jim, maybe you could send that comment to the Times (London),
>because that's where the story first appeared. As I hope you know the
>Times one of the world's most reputable newspapers and I'm sure they
>would be interested to know you have inside info that this story is a
>hoax. Why don't you drop them a line?
 
>Or is it just that you don't WANT this story to be true?

I think the Times was simply reporting that Thiering's ideas existed, I
doubt very much that the paper was endorsing them. It wouldn't matter
if it was, since the world's scholars on the scrolls have all dismissed
Thiering's ideas as crazed 'science fiction'. I think I would trust
scholars of the calibre of Geza Vermes before I would take the word of
 newspaper editor.

I to am an atheist and a historian of the NT period. I feel that, just
as we beg (vainly) for the fundies to be highly critical of their own
ideas, then we should be equally critical of ideas which seem plausible
and appeal to our prejudices. The old story of Jesus not dying on the
cross and being revived in the tomb *sounds* fine. But there is no more
evidence for it than for Jesus being raised from the dead by Martians.
Tim O'Neill 
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Contents of the 'Death Sea Scrolls': claim by Australian scientist
From: Jacqueline Cote <A410JACQ@HASARA11.BITNET>
Date: Thursday, 27 Aug 1992 10:17:35 CET
Organization: SARA - Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam

>> A few weeks ago there was an article in a local newspaper that an Australian
>> scientist (I forgot her name), who had studied (part of) the Scrolls claims
>> that they state that Jesus *did not* die after his crucifiction, was revived
>>
>> (rest deleted)
>
>If you are gullible enough to believe that story, I have a question for you.
>Would you be interested in buying some beach-front property in Arizona?
>(There's lots of "beach" down there you know.)  Or how about the Brooklin
>Bridge?  Or closer to home perhaps, the Eiffel Tower?
>
>Regards,
>
>Jim B.
 
Gee whiz Jim, maybe you could send that comment to the Times (London),
because that's where the story first appeared. As I hope you know the
Times one of the world's most reputable newspapers and I'm sure they
would be interested to know you have inside info that this story is a
hoax. Why don't you drop them a line?
 
Or is it just that you don't WANT this story to be true?
 
JC
________________________________________________________________________________
Jacqueline Cote'     | Astronomical Inst., Un. of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
                     | and: SRON Space Research, Groningen, The Netherlands
jcote@sron.rug.nl    | phone: +31 (0)50 634014  +31 (0)50 418433 (home)
a410jacq@vm1.sara.nl | FAX: +31 (0)50 634033
From: etroup@robin.rp.csiro.au (Euan Troup, AT Parkes.)
Subject: Re: A question
Summary: It's still irrelevant
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Keywords: Life Death Everything
Organization: CSIRO Division of Radiophysics/Australia Telescope National Faci
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 09:30:00 GMT

In article <BtLxDo.Ls3@apollo.hp.com>, perry@apollo.hp.com (Jim Perry) writes...
>In article <1992Aug26.154203.5111@pellns.alleg.edu> frisinv@alleg.edu writes:
>>      You die. Oops, you were wrong and there is a god (or more that one
>>god or some goddesses or a giant carrot with divine powers...). You were a
>>nice guy during your life so this being asks you to join it in heaven. Now
>>a day [in] heaven consists mostly of information exchange, practicing various
>>artforms and sciences, and lotsa philosophizing on whatever the topic of
>>intrest is that day. If your lucky, you might get build a new universe or
>>two. Would you accept the invitation even though you spent your life in
>>the firm belief that [no] such place exists (the alterative is to cease to
>>exist. Not out of spite, there just isn't an alterative existance)? This
>>may sound like a stupid question, but I've gotten very diverse answers
>>among my atheist friends.
>
>The simple answer is: "yes, of course I'd take it".
>
>This assumes, of course, that the heaven that turned out to exist was
>really the one that the various religions talk about, even though I
>never believed them, with any problems I might have found in the
>descriptions resolved.  Of course, there could be all sorts of
>gotchas.  For instance, I imagine that even the sort of nice stuff you
>describe could get pretty tiresome after a few million years.  Or,
>this could be a demonic trick, and, for instance, it turns out that
>the "topic of interest that day" ALWAYS turns out to be "Who killed
>J.R.?", or that while a *day* in heaven is as you say, the *nights*
>are spent up to your ankles in raw sewage, standing on your head (old
>joke punchline).  I suspect the safe thing is to make sure up front
>that the choice of oblivion remains in heaven (not to turn this back
>toward "is there free will in heaven...").
>--
>Jim Perry                          Distributed Object Computing Program
>perry@apollo.hp.com                Hewlett-Packard Co., Chelmsford MA
>This is the way the breakfast ends, not with a wimp but a banger.

        It's still a meaningless question. When I die, I cease to exist. There's
no doubt at all. I lose my kidneys (no more adrenalin to make the heart race),
my brain (no more endorphins to make me feel good, or alcohol for that matter),
no more nerve endings to rub together. Whatever survives after death certainly
isn't me, so it can make it's own decisions.

Euan Troup,     etroup@atnf.csiro.au
..mostly harmless                      Disclaimer: I frame no hypotheses.
From: locklin@titan.ucc.umass.edu (SCOTT C LOCKLIN)
Subject: Re: In the Infinite Universe
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 20:03:59 GMT
X-Posted-From: titan.ucc.umass.edu
X-Posted-Through: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

In article <1992Aug25.080155.27593@sics.se> torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen) writes:
>In article <1992Aug24.231033.14013@mprgate.mpr.ca> siemens@mprgate.mpr.ca 
>(Curtis Siemens) writes:
>
>   >Sorry to burst your proof, but ACTUAL INFINITES do not exist.
>
>   On the contrary, actual infinites do exist. In fact there are
>infinitely many atoms in the universe. Or perhaps you have an
>a priori argument to show that there are not?

To quote my fav cartoon charachter Ren Hoek,"You EEEEEDIOT!!!!"
If there were an infinite number of atoms in the universe, it would collapse
on itself (Assuming you accept general relativity)

>   >If an actual infinite did exist, then
>   >I could do ordinary math with that quantity, and produce an
>   >infinite (concept here :)) amount of contradictions.
>
>  This is on the face of it nonsense.

Gotto agree with you here...

-Scott
From: danoc@earlybird.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR])
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: god is not relevant
Date: 3 Sep 92 16:17:28 GMT
Organization: Subvert the Dominant Paradigm, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: earlybird

(Allen Ethridge) wonders:

 >Now, is it reasonable to call oneself an "atheist" if one's position is that
 >god is not relevant?  I don't think that "agnostic" is correct, since if god
 >is not relevant then the question of god's existence is also not relevant.
 >Is this atheism, and if not then what is it?
 
 >Or is god relevant?  If so, how and why?  What's he/she/it needed for?
 
It depends on what you refer to when you say "god"; if you mean
only the idea of a personal god, one could still have some sort
of religion, and thus, a label might be useful. If
religion/mysticism/irrationality as a whole is irrelevant to you,
then one could be a fundamentalist rationalist. If you believe
the "divine" is irrelevant (rather than just the idea of a personal
god), then I would say you could call yourself an atheist
without misunderstanding, although just as with religion, I 
believe there are degrees of atheism, depending on how one
defines the term.

(Jeffrey Clark) writes:

 Unfortunately God's existence is relevant, as until we convince the majority
 of fundies that God has no bearing on our lives they will continue to 
 brainwash and psychologically maim large numbers of people, besides wasting
 a large portion of the community's resources doing it.
 
Good Luck. 

Dano
Newsgroups: alt.atheism