HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dabrowsk@parc.xerox.com (Jarek Dabrowski)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.atheism
Subject: What happened to Gavins' kill file
Date: 4 Sep 92 18:01:15 GMT
Organization: Xerox PARC

In <willimsa.715623094@unix1.tcd.ie> Gavin Williams explains why he was
never able to refute any of my arguments:

-Stephen James to Stephen Buckley:
>>>please do not continue this preaching here. 
-Jarek:
>>PREACH: 1. to deliver a sermon 2. to explain in a tiresome way 3. to
>>use arguments to which an alt.atheist can find no counter-arguments.
-Gavin Williams:
>What happened to my kill file?? You're in it [...] Oh, just go away, Jarek.
>
KILL FILE: Usually, a file which contains names of impolite persons and
a list of uninteresting subjects. In alt.atheism, a file which contains
names of preachers (see: PREACH, 1-3). 


Best wishes,
             Jarek
======================================================
 .-----.            Dabrowski@Parc.xerox.com       
 `-> <-'       I WANT DAN BREDY BACK TO THE NET
From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik (Hacker))
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Cain's & Abel's Wives [was: some gods are _not_ creaters of all things, apparently]
Date: 23 Aug 92 23:10:08 GMT
Followup-To: talk.religion.misc
Organization: Apple

In article <1992Aug20.200028.10580@ncsu.edu>, cmgrawbu@eos.ncsu.edu
(CHRISTOPHER M GRAWBURG) wrote:
> To say that there was a group of people other than those from Adam and Eve is 
> simply un-Biblical. At that time, there were no other people to mate with so 
> the wives had to have been "relatives." Also, remember the age of the people back
> then, they lived for several hundreds of years therefore a fairly large 
> population would have built up.

Do you know what is the biggest biological problem with people marrying
each other from the same village? It has happened many times, and it's 
still true. 

This is thesame reason people do cross-breeding of animals as well. Or
why some Persian cats have problems with their bodies.

Cheers,
Kent
---
"George, sorry but I do look much better in my running shorts than you and
Bill..."
From: 00jdbecktel@bsu-ucs.uucp
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Wrong Pronoun
Date: 4 Sep 92 02:30:24 GMT

In file 21555 you are referring to God as a she so you say. WRONG.... It says
in Genesis that God created man in his own image, so how can God be a woman 
when it says otherwise in the Bible.                          


                         Singed 
                                Young 
                                 Ricky
Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:14982 sci.skeptic:15108
From: jmv@halibut.cis.upenn.edu (Jean-Marc Vezien)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Date: 27 Aug 92 02:00:29 GMT
Followup-To: talk.religion.misc
Organization: GRASP Lab

In article <1992Aug27.000725.3682@hfsi.uucp>, ata@hfsi.uucp (John Ata FSO) writes:
> In article <25AUG199211121196@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu> lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard) writes:
> >In article <1992Aug19.222409.7629@hfsi.uucp>, ata@hfsi.UUCP (John Ata FSO) writes...
> >>What do you mean by "morally permissible"?
> >
> >Permitted by moral standards.  Morally right and good.  Not wrong.
[...]
> The reason I asked the question is because I believe we have to have the
> same definitions of what we mean by "morally permissible".  Otherwise, we
> will see things totally different.  But I will try...
> 
> If I "create" something such as life by merely using nature's
> tools such as donating a sperm in order to fertilize an egg, then
> I would argue that it would not be morally permissible for me to
> destroy it because I only was a cooperating agent in its creation.
> It exists as a free seperate entity, not owned by me.  On the
> other hand, If I created it out of nothing (an attribute only
> attributed to God) then it would not only be permissible for me to
> kill it physically, but to destroy it totally (for those who
> believe in the non-physical component of humans).  The fact that
> God has been known to do the former, but not the latter is an
> attribute of his infinite love for us, not some moral code of
> behaviour.

I'm not sure I would agree with you on that one.
Despite what some people say, I believe strongly that
we will be able in a near future (say in the century range)
to produce small lifeforms (monocellular and maybe more).
This is not blind faith (I'm not a creationnist ;)), but
observation of what science is able to achieve. Then,
will it be morally permissible to kill those lifeforms 
whenever we want. I would accept it for simple lifeforms, but
what if we made complicated organisms ? I wouldn't feel
god-ish if I could create life. I only see life as a very valuable
chemical process. I just try to avoid destroying it unneccessarily.
What is neccessity ? Well, if I was hungry and being able to
create an oister, I would probably do it. In fact I'd do it right now...


JM.
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.atheism
From: pharvey@mipos3.intel.com (Paul Harvey)
Subject: Re: Faith
Organization: Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA USA
	<graham.715309353@galois> <fR1Gm1b@quack.sac.ca.us> 
	<graham.715346656@galois>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 17:40:40 GMT

In article <graham.715346656@galois> 
graham@maths.su.oz.au (Graham Matthews) writes:
>Nope I am saying that what you call "blind faith" I call "faith",
>and what you call "faith" I call "educated guess".

OK, now I get it. There is a scaling factor between the way I use English and
the way you use English. Fair enough since we are on opposite sides of the
equator far from the native homeland of English if there is such a thing. OK,
so if you don't mind, let's try to work out a key:

I say:			You say:
truth			truth
falsehood		falsehood
extra blind faith	blind faith
blind faith		faith
faith			educated guess
educated guess		?
lucky guess		?
dead wrong guess	?
can't even guess	?
just don't know		?
don't even care		?

I think I get it now, you don't really like the word faith? I suppose that
is understandable given certain religious misuse of the word. I suppose I
could argue that if you agree that you have faith in some things then you must
be a theist. You don't have to worry, I may insult your intelligence but
I'm not on a conversion trip. I myself have faith but that doesn't mean I am
necessarily a religious person, it just doesn't follow. You can call me what
you want and label me as you see fit, but I am only me. I am that I am and
you probably hate that saying.
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
From: n5ppm264 (Charlie Board)
Subject: Re: Free Will / Evil / Creation
Organization: bnr
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 17:02:39 GMT

In article <adams.714855255@spssig>, adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:
> 

> Hmm.  You have an interesting definition of a logical trap.  If God creates
> a universe of people with 'free will' who do not sin, there still has to be
> the logical possibility of evil.  If there is no possible way to do evil,
> then there is no free will.

Huh? I don't understand the last sentence.
> 
> It is entirely possible for God to create a being that would always make
> the right choice.  But I don't see this as free will, for if the being
  ^^^
> always makes the right choice, there is no possibility that they will do
> evil, thus no real possibility, thus no free will.

Ahh,now I see. You're making the (indefensible) assumption that every choice
at which free will could apply must be between "THE right choice" or "an evil
choice". Can you give a logical reason why God couldn't create a universe in
which free will existed as freedom to choose between multiple options on a
given event BUT none were evil? If not, then you have no grounds to state
that free will & lack of evil are incompatible.

Let me try to cook up a half-baked analogy to illustrate.
Suppose I decide (using my free will:)) to go to Boston (from Raleigh). I 
must use my free will to decide how to accomplish this. Among the options are
the folowing:
     1) drive my car
     2) buy a plane ticket
     3) go by bus
     4) blink my eyes and be transported there immediately
     5) steal a car and drive
     6) flap my arms and fly
     7) hitchhike the whole way, murdering everyone who gives me a ride

Now, the only choices here that entail evil are 5 & 7. Why couldn't an 
omnipotent creator create me in such a manner that these options never 
occur to me? Would that limitation eliminate my free will? If so, then why
doesn't the fact that I'm created in such a manner that 4 & 6 don't occur
to me eliminate my free will?

Charles Board
email: cnc405@bnr.ca

"These views probably don't represent my employers' views"
> 
>  -Steve
> --
>  The opinions expressed above are those of the author and not SPSS, Inc.
>                         -------------------
>      adams@spss.com                           Phone: (312) 329-3522
>      Steve Adams                              Fax:   (312) 329-3558
> 
> 
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.atheism
From: rmg53668@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Ryan M. Grant)
Subject: Re: Jesus & the Sin of the World
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 01:29:37 GMT

Thanks Sean, for the analogy I just read.  Guess I'll catch up on the entire
thread before adding my own gibberish next time.

	<goofy look>
	- Ryan

Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
From: sbuckley@fraser.sfu.ca (Stephen Buckley)
Subject: Re: some questions about God(tm)
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 23:56:08 GMT

Dan O'Connell writes:

>(Stephen Buckley) opines to Young Jeff?:

>   well, i was asking more do you believe absolute answers exist, not
> really what, specifically, they may be.  see, i ask this because
> tons of people believe the universe is too unknowable for absolute
> answers to even exist, thus they turn to ineffible religions/philosophies
> that stress the unnecessariness of ultimate answers [buddhism, taoism,
> californism, etc.].  i think before any of us asks questions of the meaning
> of life, we should first ask ourselves if we believe the answers exist.

>Hmmm. Sometimes I don't think we have that choice. Certainly
>each person's life is a figurative question: the question
>of "what is the purpose of my life"?, or the other "great"
>questions can be questions for which there are no absolute
>answers or it may be that we will never know whether there is
>an absolute answer; yet, it is absolutely imperative that we
>search for answers nonetheless.

  so i take this to mean you don't believe absolute answers exist and
are knowable to the reasonably intelligent human being without  there being
big mystical gaps.  good to know where you stand.  i disagree tho.

>   so technically before i provide my responses, you may have to search 
> within yourself, look at the extraordinary nature of the universe and life,
> examine the scientific evidence for the invalidity of evolution, 

>It should be noted that there are plenty of religious people
>(christians and others) who both believe in a religious system
>and believe the theory of evolution to hold utilty.

>It is my belief that it is the minority of religious beliefs
>(yours included) which have problems with science.

  i don't have a problem with science.  i've yet to see, tho, how it
conclusively proves that god doesn't exist.  otherwise, to quote dan
ackroyd, "back off, man, i'm a scientist."

---                          
     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: emarsh@hernes-sun.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Marsh)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Some questions for Laura. Please read it.
Date: 26 Aug 1992 19:49:16 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
NNTP-Posting-Host: hernes-sun

In article <ksand-200892122116@wintermute.apple.com> ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik (Hacker)) writes:

>I would like to know if this is really the case -- do JWs believe
>that there was never any rain on Earth before the Flood? This is 
>getting more and more crazy... This issue opens a huge new can
>of worms, all crawling all over the JW logic.

This is religion we are talking here; what made you think that logic
has anything to do with it?

>Cheers,
>Kent

Eric
Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:15610 alt.atheism:16522
From: scg@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Scott Goehring)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Jesus & the Sin of the World
Date: 4 Sep 92 15:57:33 GMT
Organization: Society for the Prevention of National Mudding Associations

de5@ORNL.GOV (Dave Sill) writes:

>Yow!  You mean one loses the ability to make decisions when their
>immortal soul leaves their mortal body?!  I've never heard that
>before, and I'm sure a few Christians expecting the afterlife to be,
>er, heavenly will be rather disappointed to find out that they'll
>lose their cognative abilities when they die.

Yeah, but it doesn't matter, because they'll be full of heavenly bliss
and happy and all that.  Who needs to be able to think when you're
happy?  Kinda reminds me of the effects of some drugs (or the Happy
Plant from "Dinosaurs").
-- 
The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion.  I could never
give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
	-- Abraham Lincoln
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Faith vs. Reason
Date: 2 Sep 92 01:11:08 GMT
Followup-To: talk.religion.misc
Organization: Apple

In article <fRYkH6X@quack.sac.ca.us>, pharvey@quack.sac.ca.us (Paul Harvey)
wrote:
> I find this unbelievable. I assume you are of European descent. I have
> never understood this longing on the part of Europeans for the good old
> days of slavery. The desire for an all knowing and just slave master to
> conduct your life of slavery for you. This is so sad and a waste of a
> creation and an insult to the creator. You have been freed, any shackles
> are of your own design, any slave master will mislead you to the way of
> darkness. Wake up while you still have a chance! 

I don't find this unbelievable. Americans assume too much about European
traditions and cultures. Well, slavery wasn't the norm in the whole
Europe. I come from a culture (the Nordic one) where we haven't had
slavery for a *long* time, not during the American times of slavery,
for instance. And where women were allowed to vote far earlier than
in US. The issue of slavery in Nordic countries is something that
we don't even reflect upon, unless we speak about the condiditions
of the former black people of US.

So to use slavery as a form of a conditional bondage that Europeans
have to free from is a big myth :-). 

Cheers,
Kent
European.
From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Some questions for Laura. Please read it.
Date: 30 Aug 92 01:47:27 GMT
Followup-To: talk.religion.misc
Organization: Apple

In article <540@texbell.sbc.com>, lm8637@tnessd.sbc.com (Lou Montgomery
(214+464-1049)) wrote:

>         This seems simple enough to answer.  Here goes.
>       If 100% of the "prophesied" events do, in fact, occur in
>       just the way predicted, there is a good chance that a prophet
>       has spoken.  However, 99.99% will not do.  If ANY prophesy
>       proves to be false, or incorrect in any way, the speaker
>       is a fraud.

Any prophecy, that is written in an abstract way, has a good chance
to be interpreted later. For instance, I could say that "the bridge
and the mountain will encounter with a big bang". And 300 years
later if Golden Gate will crash due to a 7.5 Earthquake people will
say that prophet Kent was right.

The issue with Biblical prophecies was that they were targeted
at very specific people and cities, and when history passed, scholars
mapped the prophecies to new historical persons, events, and places.
Sigh. A real prophecy would mention Hitler and peace treaty dates
exactly, instead of talking about fig trees that bloom.

Cheers,
Kent
---
"George, sorry but I do look much better in my running shorts than you and
Bill..."
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: re: Seeing The Light in Bosnia
From: <SECBH@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Date: Monday, 31 Aug 1992 17:08:43 EDT
Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center

In article <2510@tredysvr.Tredydev.Unisys.COM>,
tom@tredysvr.Tredydev.Unisys.COM (Tom Albrecht) writes:

>In article <92243.125027SECBH@CUNYVM.BITNET> SECBH@CUNYVM.BITNET writes:
>>
>>As Western nations dawdled about using force to stop Serbia's
>>"ethnic cleansing" campaign, Iran has asked the Organization of
>>the Islamic Conference to hold an emergency meeting to study
>>military options to defend Bosnian Muslims.  Turkey, a predominantly
>>Muslim country, is prepared to send around a 1,000 men to Bosnia
>>as part of a U.N. military force.

>Sounds like a case of the pot calling the kettle black.  Are the Islamic
>fundamentalists who run the government of Iran prepared
>to stop abusing the "infidel" minorities, like Christians and Bahais,
>-who live in their country?  Are they prepared to institute
>religious tolerance? Are they prepared, for instance, to give portions  of
their
>own country to form a Bahai homeland?

Thank you for lunch Mr. Albrecht!  I had a bet that the first response
would be from Mr. Muehlhausen, Mr. Gross or yourself pointing out that
the Muslims are worse and that's that ...ignoring either pro or con
the substance of the posting.

It doesn't matter what the wrapping says,"Muslim" or "Christian, the
fundy mentality is the same across the board.  You would be more at
home in Teheran chatting with the fundies there than you would be
with most Christians in the U.S.

Incidentally, you are a bit off course if you think the problem in
Bosnia-Herzegovina is over the Slavic Muslims wanting a Muslim
"homeland."

Jack Carroll
From: hartigan@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: The problem of evil (God ain't what you think!)
Date: 26 Aug 92 14:34:30 -0300
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <sbuckley.714789988@sfu.ca>, sbuckley@fraser.sfu.ca (Stephen Buckley) writes:
> hartigan@ac.dal.ca writes:
> 
>>Because God did NOT do that (apparently), he MUST want evil to exist.
>>He must WANT people to sin, and fail, and be separate from Him. 
>>Because that is the kind of universe he created. And omnipotent beings
>>ALWAYS get what they want. 
> 
>   this only works if you presume that people did not choose to sin
> out of free will, that god somehow causes us to sin all the time.
> 

No - God created the kind of beings who WOULD choose to sin. 
Being omniscient, he presumably knew that some of the beings he was creating
would choose evil. He created them anyway - thus bringing sin into the world.

More importantly - the fact that he created them anyway shows that he 
WANTED people in existence who would sin and not repent.
If he hadn't wanted them, he wouldn't have created them. 

He knew beforehand (the wily old fellow) which of his possible children
would come back to him and which ones wouldn't.  But he created the ones
who were going to damn themselves anyway, even though he knew full well that 
this was what they were going to do. Nice, eh? 

I notice that you didn't respond to the analogy I set up to illustrate
this point. Is that because it was too facile to even bother with? 

The fact is: God created a universe in which evil exists (i.e. people would
turn away from him, as this is the definition of evil.)  He created people
who HE KNEW would turn away from him and therefore be liable to damnation.
If he is really omnipotent, he didn't have to do this. But he did. So he
must WANT a certain number of people to be separate from him for all eternity.
Hard luck if you happen to be one of 'em. 

A possibility: there is a problem with Christian theology?  This is not the 
same as saying that Christianity is false.

Sean Hartigan 
hartigan@ac.dal.ca
From: hartigan@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: The problem of evil (God ain't what you think!)
Date: 25 Aug 92 18:04:26 -0300
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <l9kp31INNkto@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM>, danoc@earlybird.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR]) writes:
> 
>  Paal Steinar Berg wondered:
>  
>   Can one combine these statements:
>   
>   1.God is allmighty.
>   2.God is only good. (i.e. not evil)
>   3.Evil things happens.
> 
> (Steve Gross) replied:
> 
>  ---- Why do they have to be combined?  God IS Almighty.  God IS good.  
>  God IS not evil.  And evil things do happen.  
>  

This is an example of one of the things that absolutely stuns me about
die-hard ideologues.   "X=1, A=X, but A does not equal 1!" they will
cheerfully assert. Odd! 

HOW does one manage this sort of thing??? 

>  Because there is evil in the world, does not mean that God created it, or
>  is the author of it. 

If God IS Almighty, and God IS all-knowing, then it is impossible that 
something can happen contrary to his will. If He wants it, He can get it!
Anything. Don't matter what. If He doesn't get it, that means he didn't
want it.

Now - this means that God KNOWINGLY created a universe in which babies
die in burning cars, children are beaten to death, etc ad nauseam.

And in which people choose evil.  If he wanted to, he could have created
people who had free will but no DESIRE to choose evil. That is, people
with the ability to choose evil, but no desire to. People who found evil
too ugly to even contemplate seriously. There are some people like that now.
Why not everybody? 

Voila! Problem solved! A universe with free will and no evil! 
 
Because God did NOT do that (apparently), he MUST want evil to exist.
He must WANT people to sin, and fail, and be separate from Him. 
Because that is the kind of universe he created. And omnipotent beings
ALWAYS get what they want. 

> The bible plainly says that Lucipher is the father
>  of it, and not God.  Why does everyone always blame God?  Imagine God
>  creating an angelic being with a mind, and emotions, etc...  could that
> 

If I created a machine that flipped a coin every five minutes, and then shot
someone if the coin came up heads, would it be accurate to say that I 
bear a certain amount of responsibility for those deaths? What would a
court of law say?

(random chance analogues to free will outside of God's control. Important
thing is that 
the later uncontrollable decision making system was set up by the creator in
each case)
 
BTW, on alt.atheism about 8 mos. ago, we had a contest to see who could
dream up evil-less creations given God's reputed powers. We came up with several
nifty ones - any ideas out there?

Sean Hartigan
hartigan@ac.dal.ca

(Personally, I think it's the malevolent demiurge...)
From: markwc@barney.esl.com (Mark Christiansen)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Free Will / Evil / Creation
Date: 27 Aug 92 23:20:30 GMT
Organization: ESL Inc., Sunnyvale, CA

In article <1992Aug27.170239.2043@brtph560.bnr.ca>
n5ppm264 (Charlie Board) writes:

>[...] Why couldn't an omnipotent creator create me in such a manner
>that these options never occur to me? Would that limitation eliminate
>my free will?

Unless there is something about you or I that is not in God's control.
-- 
Good-day!

Mark
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc