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alt atheism faq atheist resources archive name atheism resources alt atheism archive name resources last modified december version atheist resources addresses of atheist organizations usa freedom from religion foundation darwin fish bumper stickers and assorted other atheist paraphernalia are available from the freedom from religion foundation in the us write to ffrf p o box madison wi telephone evolution designs evolution designs sell the darwin fish it s a fish symbol like the ones christians stick on their cars but with feet and the word darwin written inside the deluxe moulded d plastic fish is postpaid in the us write to evolution designs laurel canyon north hollywood ca people in the san francisco bay area can get darwin fish from lynn gold try mailing figmo netcom com for net people who go to lynn directly the price is per fish american atheist press aap publish various atheist books critiques of the bible lists of biblical contradictions and so on one such book is the bible handbook by w p ball and g w foote american atheist press pp isbn nd edition bible contradictions absurdities atrocities immoralities contains ball foote the bible contradicts itself aap based on the king james version of the bible write to american atheist press p o box austin tx or cameron road austin tx telephone fax prometheus books sell books including haught s holy horrors see below write to east amherst street buffalo new york telephone an alternate address which may be newer or older is prometheus books glenn drive buffalo ny african americans for humanism an organization promoting black secular humanism and uncovering the history of black freethought they publish a quarterly newsletter aah examiner write to norm r allen jr african americans for humanism p o box buffalo ny united kingdom rationalist press association national secular society islington high street holloway road london n ew london n nl british humanist association south place ethical society lamb s conduit passage conway hall london wc r rh red lion square london wc r rl fax the national secular society publish the freethinker a monthly magazine founded in germany ibka e v internationaler bund der konfessionslosen und atheisten postfach d berlin germany ibka publish a journal miz materialien und informationen zur zeit politisches journal der konfessionslosesn und atheisten hrsg ibka e v miz vertrieb postfach d berlin germany for atheist books write to ibdk internationaler b ucherdienst der konfessionslosen postfach d hannover germany telephone books fiction thomas m disch the santa claus compromise short story the ultimate proof that santa exists all characters and events are fictitious any similarity to living or dead gods uh well walter m miller jr a canticle for leibowitz one gem in this post atomic doomsday novel is the monks who spent their lives copying blueprints from saint leibowitz filling the sheets of paper with ink and leaving white lines and letters edgar pangborn davy post atomic doomsday novel set in clerical states the church for example forbids that anyone produce describe or use any substance containing atoms philip k dick philip k dick dick wrote many philosophical and thought provoking short stories and novels his stories are bizarre at times but very approachable he wrote mainly sf but he wrote about people truth and religion rather than technology although he often believed that he had met some sort of god he remained sceptical amongst his novels the following are of some relevance galactic pot healer a fallible alien deity summons a group of earth craftsmen and women to a remote planet to raise a giant cathedral from beneath the oceans when the deity begins to demand faith from the earthers pot healer joe fernwright is unable to comply a polished ironic and amusing novel a maze of death noteworthy for its description of a technology based religion valis the schizophrenic hero searches for the hidden mysteries of gnostic christianity after reality is fired into his brain by a pink laser beam of unknown but possibly divine origin he is accompanied by his dogmatic and dismissively atheist friend and assorted other odd characters the divine invasion god invades earth by making a young woman pregnant as she returns from another star system unfortunately she is terminally ill and must be assisted by a dead man whose brain is wired to hour easy listening music margaret atwood the handmaid s tale a story based on the premise that the us congress is mysteriously assassinated and fundamentalists quickly take charge of the nation to set it right again the book is the diary of a woman s life as she tries to live under the new christian theocracy women s right to own property is revoked and their bank accounts are closed sinful luxuries are outlawed and the radio is only used for readings from the bible crimes are punished retroactively doctors who performed legal abortions in the old world are hunted down and hanged atwood s writing style is difficult to get used to at first but the tale grows more and more chilling as it goes on various authors the bible this somewhat dull and rambling work has often been criticized however it is probably worth reading if only so that you ll know what all the fuss is about it exists in many different versions so make sure you get the one true version books non fiction peter de rosa vicars of christ bantam press although de rosa seems to be christian or even catholic this is a very enlighting history of papal immoralities adulteries fallacies etc german translation gottes erste diener die dunkle seite des papsttums droemer knaur michael martin atheism a philosophical justification temple university press philadelphia usa a detailed and scholarly justification of atheism contains an outstanding appendix defining terminology and usage in this necessarily tendentious area argues both for negative atheism i e the non belief in the existence of god s and also for positive atheism the belief in the non existence of god s includes great refutations of the most challenging arguments for god particular attention is paid to refuting contempory theists such as platinga and swinburne pages isbn hardcover paperback also available the case against christianity temple university press a comprehensive critique of christianity in which he considers the best contemporary defences of christianity and ultimately demonstrates that they are unsupportable and or incoherent pages isbn james turner without god without creed the johns hopkins university press baltimore md usa subtitled the origins of unbelief in america examines the way in which unbelief whether agnostic or atheistic became a mainstream alternative world view focusses on the period and while considering france and britain the emphasis is on american and particularly new england developments neither a religious history of secularization or atheism without god without creed is rather the intellectual history of the fate of a single idea the belief that god exists pages isbn hardcover x paper george seldes editor the great thoughts ballantine books new york usa a dictionary of quotations of a different kind concentrating on statements and writings which explicitly or implicitly present the person s philosophy and world view includes obscure and often suppressed opinions from many people for some popular observations traces the way in which various people expressed and twisted the idea over the centuries quite a number of the quotations are derived from cardiff s what great men think of religion and noyes views of religion pages isbn paper x richard swinburne the existence of god revised edition clarendon paperbacks oxford this book is the second volume in a trilogy that began with the coherence of theism and was concluded with faith and reason in this work swinburne attempts to construct a series of inductive arguments for the existence of god his arguments which are somewhat tendentious and rely upon the imputation of late th century western christian values and aesthetics to a god which is supposedly as simple as can be conceived were decisively rejected in mackie s the miracle of theism in the revised edition of the existence of god swinburne includes an appendix in which he makes a somewhat incoherent attempt to rebut mackie j l mackie the miracle of theism oxford this posthumous volume contains a comprehensive review of the principal arguments for and against the existence of god it ranges from the classical philosophical positions of descartes anselm berkeley hume et al through the moral arguments of newman kant and sidgwick to the recent restatements of the classical theses by plantinga and swinburne it also addresses those positions which push the concept of god beyond the realm of the rational such as those of kierkegaard kung and philips as well as replacements for god such as lelie s axiarchism the book is a delight to read less formalistic and better written than martin s works and refreshingly direct when compared with the hand waving of swinburne james a haught holy horrors an illustrated history of religious murder and madness prometheus books looks at religious persecution from ancient times to the present day and not only by christians library of congress catalog card number norm r allen jr african american humanism an anthology see the listing for african americans for humanism above gordon stein an anthology of atheism and rationalism prometheus books an anthology covering a wide range of subjects including the devil evil and morality and the history of freethought comprehensive bibliography edmund d cohen the mind of the bible believer prometheus books a study of why people become christian fundamentalists and what effect it has on them net resources there s a small mail based archive server at mantis co uk which carries archives of old alt atheism moderated articles and assorted other files for more information send mail to archive server mantis co uk saying help send atheism index and it will mail back a reply mathew

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alt atheism faq introduction to atheism archive name atheism introduction alt atheism archive name introduction last modified april version begin pgp signed message an introduction to atheism by mathew mathew mantis co uk this article attempts to provide a general introduction to atheism whilst i have tried to be as neutral as possible regarding contentious issues you should always remember that this document represents only one viewpoint i would encourage you to read widely and draw your own conclusions some relevant books are listed in a companion article to provide a sense of cohesion and progression i have presented this article as an imaginary conversation between an atheist and a theist all the questions asked by the imaginary theist are questions which have been cropped up repeatedly on alt atheism since the newsgroup was created some other frequently asked questions are answered in a companion article please note that this article is arguably slanted towards answering questions posed from a christian viewpoint this is because the faq files reflect questions which have actually been asked and it is predominantly christians who proselytize on alt atheism so when i talk of religion i am talking primarily about religions such as christianity judaism and islam which involve some sort of superhuman divine being much of the discussion will apply to other religions but some of it may not what is atheism atheism is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of god some atheists go further and believe that god does not exist the former is often referred to as the weak atheist position and the latter as strong atheism it is important to note the difference between these two positions weak atheism is simple scepticism disbelief in the existence of god strong atheism is a positive belief that god does not exist please do not fall into the trap of assuming that all atheists are strong atheists some atheists believe in the non existence of all gods others limit their atheism to specific gods such as the christian god rather than making flat out denials but isn t disbelieving in god the same thing as believing he doesn t exist definitely not disbelief in a proposition means that one does not believe it to be true not believing that something is true is not equivalent to believing that it is false one may simply have no idea whether it is true or not which brings us to agnosticism what is agnosticism then the term agnosticism was coined by professor huxley at a meeting of the metaphysical society in he defined an agnostic as someone who disclaimed strong atheism and believed that the ultimate origin of things must be some cause unknown and unknowable thus an agnostic is someone who believes that we do not and cannot know for sure whether god exists words are slippery things and language is inexact beware of assuming that you can work out someone s philosophical point of view simply from the fact that she calls herself an atheist or an agnostic for example many people use agnosticism to mean weak atheism and use the word atheism only when referring to strong atheism beware also that because the word atheist has so many shades of meaning it is very difficult to generalize about atheists about all you can say for sure is that atheists don t believe in god for example it certainly isn t the case that all atheists believe that science is the best way to find out about the universe so what is the philosophical justification or basis for atheism there are many philosophical justifications for atheism to find out why a particular person chooses to be an atheist it s best to ask her many atheists feel that the idea of god as presented by the major religions is essentially self contradictory and that it is logically impossible that such a god could exist others are atheists through scepticism because they see no evidence that god exists but isn t it impossible to prove the non existence of something there are many counter examples to such a statement for example it is quite simple to prove that there does not exist a prime number larger than all other prime numbers of course this deals with well defined objects obeying well defined rules whether gods or universes are similarly well defined is a matter for debate however assuming for the moment that the existence of a god is not provably impossible there are still subtle reasons for assuming the non existence of god if we assume that something does not exist it is always possible to show that this assumption is invalid by finding a single counter example if on the other hand we assume that something does exist and if the thing in question is not provably impossible showing that the assumption is invalid may require an exhaustive search of all possible places where such a thing might be found to show that it isn t there such an exhaustive search is often impractical or impossible there is no such problem with largest primes because we can prove that they don t exist therefore it is generally accepted that we must assume things do not exist unless we have evidence that they do even theists follow this rule most of the time they don t believe in unicorns even though they can t conclusively prove that no unicorns exist anywhere to assume that god exists is to make an assumption which probably cannot be tested we cannot make an exhaustive search of everywhere god might be to prove that he doesn t exist anywhere so the sceptical atheist assumes by default that god does not exist since that is an assumption we can test those who profess strong atheism usually do not claim that no sort of god exists instead they generally restrict their claims so as to cover varieties of god described by followers of various religions so whilst it may be impossible to prove conclusively that no god exists it may be possible to prove that say a god as described by a particular religious book does not exist it may even be possible to prove that no god described by any present day religion exists in practice believing that no god described by any religion exists is very close to believing that no god exists however it is sufficiently different that counter arguments based on the impossibility of disproving every kind of god are not really applicable but what if god is essentially non detectable if god interacts with our universe in any way the effects of his interaction must be measurable hence his interaction with our universe must be detectable if god is essentially non detectable it must therefore be the case that he does not interact with our universe in any way many atheists would argue that if god does not interact with our universe at all it is of no importance whether he exists or not if the bible is to be believed god was easily detectable by the israelites surely he should still be detectable today note that i am not demanding that god interact in a scientifically verifiable physical way it must surely be possible to perceive some effect caused by his presence though otherwise how can i distinguish him from all the other things that don t exist ok you may think there s a philosophical justification for atheism but isn t it still a religious belief one of the most common pastimes in philosophical discussion is the redefinition game the cynical view of this game is as follows person a begins by making a contentious statement when person b points out that it can t be true person a gradually re defines the words he used in the statement until he arrives at something person b is prepared to accept he then records the statement along with the fact that person b has agreed to it and continues eventually a uses the statement as an agreed fact but uses his original definitions of all the words in it rather than the obscure redefinitions originally needed to get b to agree to it rather than be seen to be apparently inconsistent b will tend to play along the point of this digression is that the answer to the question isn t atheism a religious belief depends crucially upon what is meant by religious religion is generally characterized by belief in a superhuman controlling power especially in some sort of god and by faith and worship it s worth pointing out in passing that some varieties of buddhism are not religion according to such a definition atheism is certainly not a belief in any sort of superhuman power nor is it categorized by worship in any meaningful sense widening the definition of religious to encompass atheism tends to result in many other aspects of human behaviour suddenly becoming classed as religious as well such as science politics and watching tv ok so it s not a religion but surely belief in atheism or science is still just an act of faith like religion is firstly it s not entirely clear that sceptical atheism is something one actually believes in secondly it is necessary to adopt a number of core beliefs or assumptions to make some sort of sense out of the sensory data we experience most atheists try to adopt as few core beliefs as possible and even those are subject to questioning if experience throws them into doubt science has a number of core assumptions for example it is generally assumed that the laws of physics are the same for all observers these are the sort of core assumptions atheists make if such basic ideas are called acts of faith then almost everything we know must be said to be based on acts of faith and the term loses its meaning faith is more often used to refer to complete certain belief in something according to such a definition atheism and science are certainly not acts of faith of course individual atheists or scientists can be as dogmatic as religious followers when claiming that something is certain this is not a general tendency however there are many atheists who would be reluctant to state with certainty that the universe exists faith is also used to refer to belief without supporting evidence or proof sceptical atheism certainly doesn t fit that definition as sceptical atheism has no beliefs strong atheism is closer but still doesn t really match as even the most dogmatic atheist will tend to refer to experimental data or the lack of it when asserting that god does not exist if atheism is not religious surely it s anti religious it is an unfortunate human tendency to label everyone as either for or against friend or enemy the truth is not so clear cut atheism is the position that runs logically counter to theism in that sense it can be said to be anti religion however when religious believers speak of atheists being anti religious they usually mean that the atheists have some sort of antipathy or hatred towards theists this categorization of atheists as hostile towards religion is quite unfair atheist attitudes towards theists in fact cover a broad spectrum most atheists take a live and let live attitude unless questioned they will not usually mention their atheism except perhaps to close friends of course this may be in part because atheism is not socially acceptable in many countries a few atheists are quite anti religious and may even try to convert others when possible historically such anti religious atheists have made little impact on society outside the eastern bloc countries to digress slightly the soviet union was originally dedicated to separation of church and state just like the usa soviet citizens were legally free to worship as they wished the institution of state atheism came about when stalin took control of the soviet union and tried to destroy the churches in order to gain complete power over the population some atheists are quite vocal about their beliefs but only where they see religion encroaching on matters which are not its business for example the government of the usa such individuals are usually concerned that church and state should remain separate but if you don t allow religion to have a say in the running of the state surely that s the same as state atheism the principle of the separation of church and state is that the state shall not legislate concerning matters of religious belief in particular it means not only that the state cannot promote one religion at the expense of another but also that it cannot promote any belief which is religious in nature religions can still have a say in discussion of purely secular matters for example religious believers have historically been responsible for encouraging many political reforms even today many organizations campaigning for an increase in spending on foreign aid are founded as religious campaigns so long as they campaign concerning secular matters and so long as they do not discriminate on religious grounds most atheists are quite happy to see them have their say what about prayer in schools if there s no god why do you care if people pray because people who do pray are voters and lawmakers and tend to do things that those who don t pray can t just ignore also christian prayer in schools is intimidating to non christians even if they are told that they need not join in the diversity of religious and non religious belief means that it is impossible to formulate a meaningful prayer that will be acceptable to all those present at any public event also non prayers tend to have friends and family who pray it is reasonable to care about friends and family wasting their time even without other motives you mentioned christians who campaign for increased foreign aid what about atheists why aren t there any atheist charities or hospitals don t atheists object to the religious charities there are many charities without religious purpose that atheists can contribute to some atheists contribute to religious charities as well for the sake of the practical good they do some atheists even do voluntary work for charities founded on a theistic basis most atheists seem to feel that atheism isn t worth shouting about in connection with charity to them atheism is just a simple obvious everyday matter and so is charity many feel that it s somewhat cheap not to say self righteous to use simple charity as an excuse to plug a particular set of religious beliefs to weak atheists building a hospital to say i do not believe in god is a rather strange idea it s rather like holding a party to say today is not my birthday why the fuss atheism is rarely evangelical you said atheism isn t anti religious but is it perhaps a backlash against one s upbringing a way of rebelling perhaps it is for some but many people have parents who do not attempt to force any religious or atheist ideas upon them and many of those people choose to call themselves atheists it s also doubtless the case that some religious people chose religion as a backlash against an atheist upbringing as a way of being different on the other hand many people choose religion as a way of conforming to the expectations of others on the whole we can t conclude much about whether atheism or religion are backlash or conformism although in general people have a tendency to go along with a group rather than act or think independently how do atheists differ from religious people they don t believe in god that s all there is to it atheists may listen to heavy metal backwards even or they may prefer a verdi requiem even if they know the words they may wear hawaiian shirts they may dress all in black they may even wear orange robes many buddhists lack a belief in any sort of god some atheists even carry a copy of the bible around for arguing against of course whoever you are the chances are you have met several atheists without realising it atheists are usually unexceptional in behaviour and appearance unexceptional but aren t atheists less moral than religious people that depends if you define morality as obedience to god then of course atheists are less moral as they don t obey any god but usually when one talks of morality one talks of what is acceptable right and unacceptable wrong behaviour within society humans are social animals and to be maximally successful they must co operate with each other this is a good enough reason to discourage most atheists from anti social or immoral behaviour purely for the purposes of self preservation many atheists behave in a moral or compassionate way simply because they feel a natural tendency to empathize with other humans so why do they care what happens to others they don t know they simply are that way naturally there are some people who behave immorally and try to use atheism to justify their actions however there are equally many people who behave immorally and then try to use religious beliefs to justify their actions for example here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance jesus christ came into the world to save sinners but for that very reason i was shown mercy so that in me jesus christ might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life now to the king eternal immortal invisible the only god be honor and glory forever and ever the above quote is from a statement made to the court on february th by jeffrey dahmer the notorious cannibal serial killer of milwaukee wisconsin it seems that for every atheist mass murderer there is a religious mass murderer but what of more trivial morality a survey conducted by the roper organization found that behavior deteriorated after born again experiences while only of respondents said they had driven intoxicated before being born again had done so after conversion similarly had used illegal drugs before conversion after two percent admitted to engaging in illicit sex before salvation after freethought today september p so it seems that at best religion does not have a monopoly on moral behaviour is there such a thing as atheist morality if you mean is there such a thing as morality for atheists then the answer is yes as explained above many atheists have ideas about morality which are at least as strong as those held by religious people if you mean does atheism have a characteristic moral code then the answer is no atheism by itself does not imply anything much about how a person will behave most atheists follow many of the same moral rules as theists but for different reasons atheists view morality as something created by humans according to the way humans feel the world ought to work rather than seeing it as a set of rules decreed by a supernatural being then aren t atheists just theists who are denying god a study by the freedom from religion foundation found that over of the atheists who responded became atheists because religion did not work for them they had found that religious beliefs were fundamentally incompatible with what they observed around them atheists are not unbelievers through ignorance or denial they are unbelievers through choice the vast majority of them have spent time studying one or more religions sometimes in very great depth they have made a careful and considered decision to reject religious beliefs this decision may of course be an inevitable consequence of that individual s personality for a naturally sceptical person the choice of atheism is often the only one that makes sense and hence the only choice that person can honestly make but don t atheists want to believe in god atheists live their lives as though there is nobody watching over them many of them have no desire to be watched over no matter how good natured the big brother figure might be some atheists would like to be able to believe in god but so what should one believe things merely because one wants them to be true the risks of such an approach should be obvious atheists often decide that wanting to believe something is not enough there must be evidence for the belief but of course atheists see no evidence for the existence of god they are unwilling in their souls to see many if not most atheists were previously religious as has been explained above the vast majority have seriously considered the possibility that god exists many atheists have spent time in prayer trying to reach god of course it is true that some atheists lack an open mind but assuming that all atheists are biased and insincere is offensive and closed minded comments such as of course god is there you just aren t looking properly are likely to be viewed as patronizing certainly if you wish to engage in philosophical debate with atheists it is vital that you give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are being sincere if they say that they have searched for god if you are not willing to believe that they are basically telling the truth debate is futile isn t the whole of life completely pointless to an atheist many atheists live a purposeful life they decide what they think gives meaning to life and they pursue those goals they try to make their lives count not by wishing for eternal life but by having an influence on other people who will live on for example an atheist may dedicate his life to political reform in the hope of leaving his mark on history it is a natural human tendency to look for meaning or purpose in random events however it is by no means obvious that life is the sort of thing that has a meaning to put it another way not everything which looks like a question is actually a sensible thing to ask some atheists believe that asking what is the meaning of life is as silly as asking what is the meaning of a cup of coffee they believe that life has no purpose or meaning it just is so how do atheists find comfort in time of danger there are many ways of obtaining comfort from family friends or even pets or on a less spiritual level from food or drink or tv that may sound rather an empty and vulnerable way to face danger but so what should individuals believe in things because they are comforting or should they face reality no matter how harsh it might be in the end it s a decision for the individual concerned most atheists are unable to believe something they would not otherwise believe merely because it makes them feel comfortable they put truth before comfort and consider that if searching for truth sometimes makes them feel unhappy that s just hard luck don t atheists worry that they might suddenly be shown to be wrong the short answer is no do you many atheists have been atheists for years they have encountered many arguments and much supposed evidence for the existence of god but they have found all of it to be invalid or inconclusive thousands of years of religious belief haven t resulted in any good proof of the existence of god atheists therefore tend to feel that they are unlikely to be proved wrong in the immediate future and they stop worrying about it so why should theists question their beliefs don t the same arguments apply no because the beliefs being questioned are not similar weak atheism is the sceptical default position to take it asserts nothing strong atheism is a negative belief theism is a very strong positive belief atheists sometimes also argue that theists should question their beliefs because of the very real harm they can cause not just to the believers but to everyone else what sort of harm religion represents a huge financial and work burden on mankind it s not just a matter of religious believers wasting their money on church buildings think of all the time and effort spent building churches praying and so on imagine how that effort could be better spent many theists believe in miracle healing there have been plenty of instances of ill people being healed by a priest ceasing to take the medicines prescribed to them by doctors and dying as a result some theists have died because they have refused blood transfusions on religious grounds it is arguable that the catholic church s opposition to birth control and condoms in particular is increasing the problem of overpopulation in many third world countries and contributing to the spread of aids world wide religious believers have been known to murder their children rather than allow their children to become atheists or marry someone of a different religion those weren t real believers they just claimed to be believers as some sort of excuse what makes a real believer there are so many one true religions it s hard to tell look at christianity there are many competing groups all convinced that they are the only true christians sometimes they even fight and kill each other how is an atheist supposed to decide who s a real christian and who isn t when even the major christian churches like the catholic church and the church of england can t decide amongst themselves in the end most atheists take a pragmatic view and decide that anyone who calls himself a christian and uses christian belief or dogma to justify his actions should be considered a christian maybe some of those christians are just perverting christian teaching for their own ends but surely if the bible can be so readily used to support un christian acts it can t be much of a moral code if the bible is the word of god why couldn t he have made it less easy to misinterpret and how do you know that your beliefs aren t a perversion of what your god intended if there is no single unambiguous interpretation of the bible then why should an atheist take one interpretation over another just on your say so sorry but if someone claims that he believes in jesus and that he murdered others because jesus and the bible told him to do so we must call him a christian obviously those extreme sorts of beliefs should be questioned but since nobody has ever proved that god does not exist it must be very unlikely that more basic religious beliefs shared by all faiths are nonsense that does not hold because as was pointed out at the start of this dialogue positive assertions concerning the existence of entities are inherently much harder to disprove than negative ones nobody has ever proved that unicorns don t exist but that doesn t make it unlikely that they are myths it is therefore much more valid to hold a negative assertion by default than it is to hold a positive assertion by default of course weak atheists would argue that asserting nothing is better still well if atheism s so great why are there so many theists unfortunately the popularity of a belief has little to do with how correct it is or whether it works consider how many people believe in astrology graphology and other pseudo sciences many atheists feel that it is simply a human weakness to want to believe in gods certainly in many primitive human societies religion allows the people to deal with phenomena that they do not adequately understand of course there s more to religion than that in the industrialized world we find people believing in religious explanations of phenomena even when there are perfectly adequate natural explanations religion may have started as a means of attempting to explain the world but nowadays it serves other purposes as well but so many cultures have developed religions surely that must say something not really most religions are only superficially similar for example it s worth remembering that religions such as buddhism and taoism lack any sort of concept of god in the christian sense of course most religions are quick to denounce competing religions so it s rather odd to use one religion to try and justify another what about all the famous scientists and philosophers who have concluded that god exists for every scientist or philosopher who believes in a god there is one who does not besides as has already been pointed out the truth of a belief is not determined by how many people believe it also it is important to realize that atheists do not view famous scientists or philosophers in the same way that theists view their religious leaders a famous scientist is only human she may be an expert in some fields but when she talks about other matters her words carry no special weight many respected scientists have made themselves look foolish by speaking on subjects which lie outside their fields of expertise so are you really saying that widespread belief in religion indicates nothing not entirely it certainly indicates that the religion in question has properties which have helped it so spread so far the theory of memetics talks of memes sets of ideas which can propagate themselves between human minds by analogy with genes some atheists view religions as sets of particularly successful parasitic memes which spread by encouraging their hosts to convert others some memes avoid destruction by discouraging believers from questioning doctrine or by using peer pressure to keep one time believers from admitting that they were mistaken some religious memes even encourage their hosts to destroy hosts controlled by other memes of course in the memetic view there is no particular virtue associated with successful propagation of a meme religion is not a good thing because of the number of people who believe it any more than a disease is a good thing because of the number of people who have caught it even if religion is not entirely true at least it puts across important messages what are the fundamental messages of atheism there are many important ideas atheists promote the following are just a few of them don t be surprised to see ideas which are also present in some religions there is more to moral behaviour than mindlessly following rules be especially sceptical of positive claims if you want your life to have some sort of meaning it s up to you to find it search for what is true even if it makes you uncomfortable make the most of your life as it s probably the only one you ll have it s no good relying on some external power to change you you must change yourself just because something s popular doesn t mean it s good if you must assume something assume something it s easy to test don t believe things just because you want them to be true and finally and most importantly all beliefs should be open to question thanks for taking the time to read this article mathew for information about pgp send mail to pgpinfo mantis co uk

alt.atheism

re gospel dating in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes well john has a quite different not necessarily more elaborated theology there is some evidence that he must have known luke and that the content of q was known to him but not in a canonized form this is a new argument to me could you elaborate a little the argument goes as follows q oid quotes appear in john but not in the almost codified way they were in matthew or luke however they are considered to be similar enough to point to knowledge of q as such and not an entirely different source assuming that he knew luke would obviously put him after luke and would give evidence for the latter assumption i don t think this follows if you take the most traditional attributions then luke might have known john but john is an elder figure in either case we re talking spans of time here which are well within the range of lifetimes we are talking date of texts here not the age of the authors the usual explanation for the time order of mark matthew and luke does not consider their respective ages it says matthew has read the text of mark and luke that of matthew and probably that of mark as it is assumed that john knew the content of luke s text the evidence for that is not overwhelming admittedly earlier manuscripts of john have been discovered interesting where and which how are they dated how old are they unfortunately i haven t got the info at hand it was i think in the late s or early s and it was possibly as old as ce when they are from about why do they shed doubt on the order on putting john after the rest of the three i don t see your point it is exactly what james felder said they had no first hand knowledge of the events and it obvious that at least two of them used older texts as the base of their account and even the association of luke to paul or mark to peter are not generally accepted well a genuine letter of peter would be close enough wouldn t it sure an original together with id card of sender and receiver would be fine so what s that supposed to say am i missing something and i don t think a one step removed source is that bad if luke and mark and matthew learned their stories directly from diciples then i really cannot believe in the sort of big transformation from jesus to gospel that some people posit in news reports one generally gets no better information than this and if john is a diciple then there s nothing more to be said that john was a disciple is not generally accepted the style and language together with the theology are usually used as counterargument the argument that john was a disciple relies on the claim in the gospel of john itself is there any other evidence for it one step and one generation removed is bad even in our times compare that to reports of similar events in our century in almost illiterate societies not even to speak off that believers are not necessarily the best sources it is also obvious that mark has been edited how old are the oldest manuscripts to my knowledge which can be antiquated the oldest is quite after any of these estimates and it is not even complete the only clear editing is problem of the ending and it s basically a hopeless mess the oldest versions give a strong sense of incompleteness to the point where the shortest versions seem to break off in midsentence the most obvious solution is that at some point part of the text was lost the material from verse on is pretty clearly later and seems to represent a synopsys of the end of luke in other words one does not know what the original of mark did look like and arguments based on mark are pretty weak but how is that connected to a redating of john benedikt

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re university violating separation of church state dmn kepler unh edu until kings become philosophers or philosophers become kings writes recently ras have been ordered and none have resisted or cared about it apparently to post a religious flyer entitled the soul scroll thoughts on religion spirituality and matters of the soul on the inside of bathroom stall doors at my school the university of new hampshire it is some sort of newsletter assembled by a hall director somewhere on campus it poses a question about spirituality each issue and solicits responses to be included in the next issue it s all pretty vague i assume it s put out by a christian but they re very careful not to mention jesus or the bible i ve heard someone defend it saying well it doesn t support any one religion so what this is a state university and as a strong supporter of the separation of church and state i was enraged what can i do about this it sounds to me like it s just screaming out for parody give a copy to your friendly neighbourhood subgenius preacher with luck he ll run it through the mental mincer and hand you back an outrageously offensive and gut bustingly funny parody you can paste over the originals i can see it now the stool scroll thoughts on religion spirituality and matters of the colon you can use this text to wipe mathew

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re soc motss et al princeton axes matching funds for boy scouts in article n hy apr harder ccr p ida org n hy harder ccr p ida org bob mcgwier writes however i hate economic terrorism and political correctness worse than i hate this policy a more effective approach is to stop donating to any organizating that directly or indirectly supports gay rights issues until they end the boycott on funding of scouts can somebody reconcile the apparent contradiction between and rob strom strom watson ibm com ibm research saw mill river road p o box yorktown heights ny

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re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes didn t you say lucifer was created with a perfect nature yes define perfect then i think you are playing the usual game here make sweeping statements like omni holy or perfect and don t note that they mean exactly what they say and that says that you must not use this terms when it leads to contradictions i m not trying to play games here but i understand how it might seem that way especially when one is coming from a completely different point of view such as atheism take your foot out of your mouth i wondered about that already when i was a catholic christian the fact that the contradiction is unresolvable is one of the reasons why i am an atheist believe me i believed similar sentences for a long time but that shows the power of religion and not anything about its claims now god could have prevented lucifer s fall by taking away his ability to choose between moral alternatives worship god or worship himself but that would mean that god was in error to have make lucifer or any being with free will in the first place exactly god allows evil an evil if there ever was one now that s an opinion or at best a premise but from my point of view it is not a premise which is necessary true specifically that it is an evil to allow evil to occur it follows from a definition of evil as ordinarily used letting evil happen or allowing evil to take place in this place even causing evil is another evil but could you give a definition of free will especially in the presence of an omniscient being will is self determination in other words god created conscious beings who have the ability to choose between moral choices independently of god all will therefore is free will the omniscient attribute of god will know what the creatures will do even before the omnipotent has created them there is no choice left all is known the course of events is fixed not even for the omniscient itself to extend an argument by james tims if god is omniscient then clearly creating beings with free moral choice is a greater good than the emergence of ungodliness evil sin since he created them knowing the outcome in advance why is it the greater good to allow evil with the knowledge that it will happen why not make a unipolar system with the possibility of doing good or not doing good but that does not necessarily imply doing evil it is logically possible but your god has not done it i do not know that such is logically possible if god restrains a free being s choice to choose to do evil and simply do not good then can it be said that the being truly has a free moral choice and if good is defined as loving and obeying god and avoiding those behaviors which god prohibits then how can you say that one who is not good is not evil as well like i said i am not sure that doing not good without doing evil is logically possible and when i am not omnipotent how can i have free will you have said something about choices and the scenario gives them therefore we have what you define as free will imagine the following i can do good to other beings but i cannot harm them easily implemented by making everyone appreciate being the object of good deeds but don t make them long for them so they can not feel the absence of good as evil but whose case am i arguing it is conceivable so the omnipotent can do it or it would not be omnipotent if you want logically consistent as well you have to give up the pet idea of an omnipotent first deletion perhaps it is weak in a way if i were just speculating about the ubiquitous pink unicorns then there would be no basis for such speculation but this idea of god didn t just fall on me out of the blue or while reading science fiction or fantasy i know that some will disagree the bible describes a god who is omniscient and nevertheless created beings with free moral choice from which the definitional logic follows but that s not all there is to it there seems to be at least in my mind a certain amount of evidence which indicates that god exists and that the biblical description of him may be a fair one it is that evidence which bolsters the argument in my view that the bible describes an omniscient and omnipotent god destroys the credibility of the bible nothing less and a lot of people would be interested in evidence for a god unfortunately there can t be any with these definitions benedikt

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re political atheists arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes the motto originated in the star spangled banner tell me that this has something to do with atheists the motto on coins originated as a mccarthyite smear which equated atheism with communism and called both unamerican no it didn t the motto has been on various coins since the civil war it was just required to be on all currency in the s keith

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re an anecdote about islam in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes when they are victimized they are muslims when they victimize others they are not true muslims tm or no muslims at all quite annoying i don t understand the point of this petty sarcasm it is a basic principle of islam that if one is born muslim or one says i testify that there is no god but god and mohammad is a prophet of god that so long as one does not explicitly reject islam by word then one must be considered muslim by all muslims so the phenomenon you re attempting to make into a general rule or psychology is a direct odds with basic islamic principles if you want to attack islam you could do better than than to argue against something that islam explicitly contradicts it was no criticism of islam for a change it was a criticism of the arguments used namely whenever people you identify as muslims are the victims of the attacks of others they are used an argument for the bad situation of muslims but whenever deeds by muslim that victimize others are named they do not count as an argument because what these people did was not done as a true muslims no mention is made how muslims are the cause of a bad situation of another party double standards benedikt

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re political atheists reference line trimmed livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes there is a good deal more confusion here you started off with the assertion that there was some objective morality and as you admit here you finished up with a recursive definition murder is objectively immoral but eactly what is murder and what is not itself requires an appeal to morality yes now you have switch targets a little but only a little now you are asking what is the goal what do you mean by goal are you suggesting that there is some objective goal out there somewhere and we form our morals to achieve it well for example the goal of natural morality is the survival and propogation of the species another example of a moral system is presented within the declaration of independence which states that we should be guaranteed life liberty and the pursuit of happiness you see to have a moral system we must define the purpose of the system that is we shall be moral unto what end murder is certainly a violation of the golden rule and i thought i had defined murder as an intentional killing of a non murderer against his will and you responded to this by asking whether or not the execution of an innocent person under our system of capital punishment was a murder or not i fail to see what this has to do with anything i never claimed that our system of morality was an objective one i thought that was your very first claim that there was some kind of objective morality and that an example of that was that murder is wrong if you don t want to claim that any more that s fine well murder violates the golen rule which is certainly a pillar of most every moral system however i am not assuming that our current system and the manner of its implementation are objectively moral i think that it is a very good approximation but we can t be perfect and by the way you don t seem to understand the difference between arbitrary and objective if keith schneider defines murder to be this that and the other that s arbitrary jon livesey may still say well according to my personal system of morality all killing of humans against their will is murder and wrong and what the legal definition of murder may be in the usa kuweit saudi arabia or the prc may be matters not a whit to me well objective would assume a system based on clear and fundamental concepts while arbitary implies no clear line of reasoning keith

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re pompous ass kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes then why do people keep asking the same questions over and over because you rarely ever answer them nope i ve answered each question posed and most were answered multiple times keith

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re pompous ass livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes how long does it the motto have to stay around before it becomes the default where s the cutoff point i don t know where the exact cutoff is but it is at least after a few years and surely after years why does the notion of default not take into account changes in population makeup specifically which changes are you talking about are you arguing that the motto is interpreted as offensive by a larger portion of the population now than years ago keith

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re keith schneider stealth poster sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes to borrow from philosophy you don t truly understand the color red until you have seen it not true even if you have experienced the color red you still might have a different interpretation of it but you wouldn t know what red was and you certainly couldn t judge it subjectively and objectivity is not applicable since you are wanting to discuss the merits of red keith

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re keith schneider stealth poster arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes but if you were to discuss the merits of racism or its psycholgical benefits you would do well to have experienced it personally when you speak of experiencing religion you mean someone should believe in a religion that s right and this is pretty impossible right it would be ideal if we could believe for a while just to try out religion and only then determine which course of thought suits us best but again this is not possible not that religion warrants belief but the belief carries with it some psychological benefits there are also some psychological burdens too when you speak of experiencing racism do you mean that someone should believe in racism or that they should have racist things done to them for parallelism the former must be what you meant but it seems to be an odd usage of the phrase well if there were some psychological or other benefits gained from racism they could only be fully understood or judged by persons actually believing in racism of course the parallel happens to be a poor one but you originated it keith

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re political atheists bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes but you don t know that capital punishment is wrong so it isn t the same as shooting a better analogy would be that you continue to drive your car realizing that sooner or later someone is going to be killed in an automobile accident you know people get killed as a result of driving yet you continue to do it anyway uh uh you do not know that you will be the one to do the killing i m not sure i d drive a car if i had sufficient evidence to conclude that i would necessarily kill someone during my lifetime yes and everyone thinks as you do no one thinks that he is going to cause or be involved in a fatal accident but the likelihood is surprisingly high just because you are the man on the firing squad whose gun is shooting blanks does not mean that you are less guilty i don t know about jon but i say all taking of human life is murder and i say murder is wrong in all but one situation when it is the only action that will prevent another murder either of myself or another you mean that killing is wrong in all but one situtation and you should note that that situation will never occur there are always other options thank killing why don t you just say that all killing is wrong this is basically what you are saying i m getting a bit tired of your probabilistic arguments are you attempting to be condescending that the system usually works pretty well is small consolation to the poor innocent bastard getting the lethal injection is your personal value of human life based solely on a statistical approach you sound like an unswerving adherent to the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few so fuck the few but most people have found the risk to be acceptable you are probably much more likely to die in a plane crash or even using an electric blender than you are to be executed as an innocent i personally think that the risk is acceptable but in an ideal moral system no such risk is acceptable acceptable is the fudge factor necessary in such an approximation to the ideal keith

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re political atheists bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes i think that about or so people approve of the death penalty even realizing all of its shortcomings doesn t this make it reasonable or are you the sole judge of reasonability aside from revenge what merits do you find in capital punishment are we talking about me or the majority of the people that support it anyway i think that revenge or fairness is why most people are in favor of the punishment if a murderer is going to be punished people that think that he should get what he deserves most people wouldn t think it would be fair for the murderer to live while his victim died revenge petty and pathetic perhaps you think that it is petty and pathetic but your views are in the minority we have a local televised hot topic talk show that very recently did a segment on capital punishment each and every advocate of the use of this portion of our system of jurisprudence cited the main reason for supporting it that bastard deserved it true human compassion forgiveness and sympathy where are we required to have compassion forgiveness and sympathy if someone wrongs me i will take great lengths to make sure that his advantage is removed or a similar situation is forced upon him if someone kills another then we can apply the golden rule and kill this person in turn is not our entire moral system based on such a concept or are you stating that human life is sacred somehow and that it should never be violated this would sound like some sort of religious view i mean how reasonable is imprisonment really when you think about it sure the person could be released if found innocent but you still can t undo the imiprisonment that was served perhaps we shouldn t imprision people if we could watch them closely instead the cost would probably be similar especially if we just implanted some sort of electronic device would you rather be alive in prison or dead in the chair once a criminal has committed a murder his desires are irrelevant and you still have not answered my question if you are concerned about the death penalty due to the possibility of the execution of an innocent then why isn t this same concern shared with imprisonment shouldn t we by your logic administer as minimum as punishment as possible to avoid violating the liberty or happiness of an innocent person keith

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re political atheists bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes if i kill this person an innocent person convicted of murder then a murder would be committed but i would not be the murderer at least i wouldn t reasonably be considered a murderer with reasonable being introduced as a fudge factor necessary to account for the inability to be totally objective due to a lack of absolutely true information if society collective decides to carry the burden of executing it s citizens then it also carries the blame for their innocent blood each and every voter who casts a ballot in favor of capital punishment is in part guilty of the murder of each and every innocent victim of the system why are only those people in favor of the system to blame if society accepts such a system then each member of society is to blame when an innocent person gets executed those that are not in favor should work to convince others and most members of our society have accepted the blame they ve considered the risk to be acceptable similarly every person who drives must accept the blame for fatal traffic accidents this is something that is surely going to happen when so many people are driving it is all a question of what risk is acceptable it is much more likely that an innocent person will be killed driving than it is that one will be executed keith

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re don t more innocents die without the death penalty in article p psilink com p psilink com james f tims writes by maintaining classes d and e even in prison it seems as if we place more innocent people at a higher risk of an unjust death than we would if the state executed classes d and e with an occasional error i answer from the position that we would indeed place these people in prison for life that depends not only on their predisposition towards murder but also in their success rate at escape and therefore their ability to commit the same crimes again in other words if lifetime imprisonment doesn t work perhaps it s not because we re not executing these people but because we re not being careful enough about how we lock them up bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

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re ancient islamic rituals in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes i propose that these two trends greater level of general depression in society and other psychological problems and greater sexual promiscuity are linked with the latter being a prime cause of the former i cannot provide any evidence beyond this at this stage but the whole thesis seems very reasonable to me and i request that people ponder upon it damn right you can t provide any evidence for it rarely are any widespread social phenomenon reducible to such a simple premise if they were psychology would be a hard science with roughly the same mathematical soundness as physics your premise may well be right it is much more likely however that it reflects your socialization and religious background as well as your need to validate your religious beliefs were i to pretend to have all the answers and i don t i would say that the xenophobia guilt and intolerance brought about by adherence to fundamentalist religions play just as large a role in depressing the members of our society your mileage obviously varies bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

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re political atheists in article apr blaze cs jhu edu arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes in article pj bs d j fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes i would say that one innocent person killed is in some sense as bad as many we certainly feel that way when we punish someone for a single murder now if we reform system x by reducing the number of deaths by one we produce system xx i d say we should not go back to system x even though by doing so we would re introduce only a single extra death bob seems to think that one is as bad as many in a sense somewhat stronger than the one you indicate yes i do my argument is that the sole purpose of the death penalty is to kill people that is it s primary and i would argue only purpose to continue to kill people by a practice that has almost no utility especially when you know you will be killing innocents is unconscionable at the very least the existence of the prison system and our transportation system are based on their merits to society not their detriments we are willing to accept a few lost innocent lives because there is an overwhelming benefit to the continued existence of these systems one has to stretch the evidence and the arguments to make the same claim for capital punishment just in case i wasn t clear again we maintain a capital punsihment system that kills innocent people and provides us with no net positive gain why were you to pin me in a corner and ask i would have to respond that i don t belief the state should have the right to take life at all but i won t open that debate as it seems others are tiring of this thread on a a anyway bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

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re there must be a creator maybe in article ba e drporter suvm syr edu drporter suvm syr edu brad porter writes science is wonderful at answering most of our questions i m not the type to question scientific findings very often but personally i find the theory of evolution to be unfathomable could humans a highly evolved complex organism that thinks learns and develops truly be an organism that resulted from random genetic mutations and natural selection stuff deleted computers are an excellent example of evolution without a creator we did not create computers we did not create the sand that goes into the silicon that goes into the integrated circuits that go into processor board we took these things and put them together in an interesting way just like plants create oxygen using light through photosynthesis it s a much bigger leap to talk about something that created everything from nothing i find it unfathomable to resort to believing in a creator when a much simpler alternative exists we simply are incapable of understanding our beginnings if there even were beginnings at all and that s ok with me the present keeps me perfectly busy jim halat

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re americans and evolution in article j l rpi edu johnsd jec its rpi edu dan johnson writes in article io maine maine edu io maine maine edu writes dan johnson you don t know me but take this hand anyway bravo for go ds beautiful simply beautiful jim halat

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re speculations in article w rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes nanci ann miller nm w andrew cmu edu writes if this god is truly omnipotent as you folks like to claim then why can t he terminate eternity for the same reason he can t flibble glop ork groink the thing you are demanding that he must be able to do has no meaning in its own terms this is a classic example of excessive faith in reason the fact that we have trouble talking about something doesn t imply that it is impossible it simply implies that it is hard to talk about there is a very good chance that god can flibble glop ork groink charlie wingate can flibble glop ork groink and he isn t even god doug graham dgraham bnr ca my opinions are my own

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re political atheists livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes much though it might be fun to debate capital punishment itself this is probably the wrong group for it the only relevance here is that you don t seem to be able to tell us what capital punishment actually is and when it is murder that is when you tell us murder is wrong you are using a term you have not yet defined well i ve said that when an innocent person has been executed this is objectively a murder however who is at blame is another question it seems that the entire society that sanctions any sorts of executions realizing the risks is to blame there is a probability of killing an innocent person by shooting at random into the air and there is a probability of killing an innocent person when the state administers a system of capital punishment so when you do either you know that they actions you are taking will sooner or later result in the killing of an innocent person yes but there is also a probablity that you will kill someone doing any raondom activity presumably you had not isolated yourself totally from the rest of society because of this and driving will kill people as will airlines but people continue to do both driving and flying are not punishments inflicted on unwilling prisoners by courts they are risks that we take upon ourselves willingly and i argue that our law system is a similar risk perhaps an innocent person will be punished someday but we work to prevent this in fact many criminals go free as a result of our trying to prevent punishment of innocents if our own driving kills someone else then sure there is a moral issue i know at least one person who was involved in a fatal accident and they felt vey guilty afterwards but such accidents are to be totally expected given the numner of vehicals on the road again the blame is on society no i m not this is what you said you were saying that if there were such a false witness that resulted in an innocent person being convicted and killed it would still be the fault of the state since it did the actual killing no i just commented that the state does the killing it does not depend on there being false witnesses how could it the state does the killing even in the case of sincere mistakes yes but the state is not at fault in such a case the state can only do so much to prevent false witnesses it is possible so what are you trying to say that capital punishment is always murder because of the possibilty of human error invalidating the system i m saying capital punishment is murder period not because of this that and the other but because it involves taking human life that s my definition of murder i make no appeals to dictionaries or to objective morals okay so this is what you call murder but the question is whether or not all such murders are wrong are you saying that all taking of human life is wrong no matter what the circumstances if we as a society decide to murder someone then we should say that and lists our reasons for doing so and live with the moral consequences we should not play word games and pretend that murder isn t murder and that s my opinion about how society ought to be run but this is basically how it works society accepts the risk that an innocent person will be murdered by execution and every member of society shares this blame and most people s definitions of murder include some sort of malicious intent which is not involved in an execution is it but we were trying to discuss an objective moral system or at least its possibilty what ramifications does your personal system have on an objective one no we were not discussing an objective moral system i was showing you that you didn t have one because for one thing you were incapable of defining the terms in it for example murder murder violates the golden rule executions do not because by allowing it at all society implicitly accepts the consequences no matter who the innocent victim is we re not talking about reading minds we are just talking about knowing the truth yes we can never be absolutely certain that we have the truth but the court systems work on a principle of knowing the truth beyond a reasonable doubt sorry but you simply are not quoting yourself accurately here is what you said and since we are looking totally objectively at this case then we know what people are thinking when they are voting to execute the person or not if the intent is malicious and unfair then the execution would be murder what you are doing now is to slide into another claim which is quite different the jury being persuaded beyond a serious doubt is not the same as us knowing what is in their minds beyond a serious doubt reading the minds of the jury would certainly tell whether or not a conviction was moral or not but in an objective system only the absolute truth matters and the jury system is one method to approximate such a truth that is twelve members must be convinced of a truth moreover a jury which comes from a sufficiently prejudiced background may allow itself to be persuaded beyond a serious doubt on evidence that you and i would laugh at but then if we read the minds of these people we would know that the conviction was unfair but would it be perfectly fair if we could read minds if we assume that it would be fair if we knew the absolute truth why is it so much less fair in your opinion if we only have a good approximation of the absolute truth it s not a question of fairness your claim which i have quoted above is a claim about whether we can know it was fair so as to be able to distinguish capital punishnment from murder yes while we could objectively determine the difference if we knew all possible information we can t always determine the difference in our flawed system i think that our system is almost as good as possible but it still isn t objectively perfect you see it doesn t matter if we know it is fair or not objectively it is either fair or it is not now there s a huge difference if we can read minds we can know and if we cannot read minds we can know nothing the difference is not in degree of fairness but in what we can know but what we know has no effect on an objective system i think it is possible to produce a fairly objective system if we are clear on which goals it is supposed to promote i m not going to waste my time trying to devise a system that i am pretty sure does not exist why are you so sure i simply want people to confront reality my reality remember why is your reality important in this case the reality is that ideal theories apart we can never know even after the fact about the fairness of the justice system for every innocent person released from death row there may have been a dozen innocent people executed or a hundred or none at all we simply don t know but we can assume that the system is fairly decent at least most likely and you realize that the correctness of our system says nothing about a totally ideal and objective system now what are we going to do on the one hand we can pretend that we have an ideal theory and that we can know things we can never know and the justie system is fair and that we can wave a magic wand and make certain types of killing not murder and go on our way well we can have an ideal system but the working system can not be ideal we can only hope to create a system that is as close an approximation to the ideal system as possible on the other hand we can recognize that all justice has a small we hope probability of punishing the innocent and that in the end we do bear moral responsibility even for the probabilistic consequences of the systems we set up and then say well here we go murdering again maybe some of us will even say gee i wonder if all this is strictly necessary yes we all bear the responsibility most people seem willing to do this i think that the second is preferable in that if requires people to face the moral consequences of what we do as a society instead of sheltering ourselves from them by magic ceremonies and word games we must realize the consequences of all our actions why do you keep separating the justice system from the pack and lest i forget i also don t think we have an objective moral system and i believe i only have to take that idea seriously when someone presents evidence of it i don t think our country has an objective system but i think such an objective system can exist in theory without omniscience an objective system is not possible in practice keith

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re political atheists livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes now along comes mr keith schneider and says here is an objective moral system and then i start to ask him about the definitions that this objective system depends on and predictably the whole thing falls apart it only falls apart if you attempt to apply it this doesn t mean that an objective system can t exist it just means that one cannot be implemented keith

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re university violating separation of church state in article aa kepler unh edu dmn kepler unh edu until kings become philosophers or philosophers become kings writes recently ras have been ordered and none have resisted or cared about it apparently to post a religious flyer entitled the soul scroll thoughts on religion spirituality and matters of the soul on the inside of bathroom stall doors at my school the university of new hampshire it is some sort of newsletter assembled by a hall director somewhere on campus most of post deleted please respond as soon as possible i d like these religious postings to stop now thanks dana there is an easy way out post the flyers on the stall doors but add at the bottom in nice large capitals emergency toilet paper robert mellish fog ic uk email r mellish ic ac uk net rm sg cc ic ac uk irc hobnob and also the mrs joyful prize for rafia work

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re usatoday ad family values in article c rzz j unix portal com danb shell portal com dan e babcock writes there was a funny ad in usatoday from american family association i ll post a few choice parts for your enjoyment all emphases is in the ad i m not adding anything all the typos are mine dan s article deleted i found the same add in our local sunday newspaper the add was placed in the cartoon section the perfect place for it y k

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re islamic authority over women in article apr ultb isc rit edu snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes my claim is that a person that committs a crime doesn t believe in god for the moment that the crime is committed at least whether they are originally believers or not to believe is to do good your statistics indicate people that have declared atheism and doubtless when an atheist does an act of charity they temporarily become a baptist jon

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re ancient islamic rituals in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes i propose that these two trends greater level of general depression in society and other psychological problems and greater sexual promiscuity are linked with the latter being a prime cause of the former i cannot provide any evidence beyond this at this stage but the whole thesis seems very reasonable to me and i request that people ponder upon it i pondered it for all of ten seconds when i realised that since we don t have any reliable statistics for sexual promiscuity and since the whole issue of depression isn t at all well defined for earlier centuries you are probably talking crap of course you could pull a mozumder on us and say that people who are having sex outside marriage are defined to be depressed i can t say i d ever noticed myself jon

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re soc motss et al princeton axes matching funds for boy scouts in article apr cbnewsl cb att com stank cbnewsl cb att com stan krieger writes now can we please use rec scouting for the purpose for which it was established clearly we netnews voters decided that we did not want to provide a scouting newsgroup to give fringe groups a forum for their anti societal political views ok this is the only thing i will comment on from stan at this time part of this forum we call rec scouting is for policy discussions and related topics this is a policy discussion and involves related topics this is not a fringe group discussion obviously it engenders strong feelings from all sides of the issues at hand wether a particular view is anti societal or not is your opinion and yours alone don t try to make it seem otherwise if you do not wish to engage in this discussion use a kill file if you wish to continue in this discussion please do so knowing full well the implications that apply i know for myself that i plan on continuing with the discussion when i have the wish to have input i for one am tired of people trying to say that this is not a matter significant for this group it is and quite so especially for those of us who feel the impact more closely dominick v zurlo if the world s an www oyster why am i eagle scout allergic to mollusks blacklisted

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re political atheists mathew mathew mantis co uk writes as for rape surely there the burden of guilt is solely on the rapist not so if you are thrown into a cage with a tiger and get mauled do you blame the tiger keith

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re political atheists mathew mathew mantis co uk writes perhaps we shouldn t imprision people if we could watch them closely instead the cost would probably be similar especially if we just implanted some sort of electronic device why wait until they commit the crime why not implant such devices in potential criminals like communists and atheists sorry i don t follow your reasoning you are proposing to punish people before they commit a crime what justification do you have for this keith

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re enviroleague a new alternative to scouting for those unacceptable to bsa for reasons of religious or sexual preference from boyd r critz iii compuserve com subject enviroleague birth announcement on march from earth forum compuserve information service formal announcement sm enviroleague a new youth movement enviroleague was recently born according to its founder boyd r critz iii cis id of peoria illinois enviroleague exists for the education of youth both male and female in matters concerning their values related to and responsibility for our environment incorporated as an illinois not for profit corporation its articles and initial applications for a service mark have now been filed according to critz its draft bylaws contain the following statement of mission and objectives mission it is the mission of enviroleague and its adult members to foster and implement the improved education of young people in the need to conduct their lives as stewards of the earth to leave the earth in a better condition than they found it and to otherwise act as responsible moral and ethical users of their environment to pursue the accomplishment of this mission enviroleague shall seek to serve as a catalyst focusing in common cause the separate efforts of all groups desiring the preservation improvement and responsible use of the environment in which we must all live objectives in pursuit of the mission of enviroleague its primary objectives shall be to establish a movement involving as many environmentally concerned organizations as possible said movement having as its primary focus the education and participatory involvement of young people in appropriate areas of environmental concern to develop and provide to such organizations and their branches a full complement of program materials for their use including suitable uniforms insignia and other badges written ideas syllabi and information literature and other items as shall seem appropriate and desirable to serve as a clearing house for the exchange of program ideas materials and information among said organizations and to assist environmentally concerned organizations to recruit and train the necessary adult leadership for their youth programs enviroleague will operate through three program divisions serving youth in the elementary middle and high school grades respectively service shall be through formation of enviroleague teams either by enviroleague itself or by environmentally conscious organizations or their local branches wishing a charter to use programs developed by enviroleague enviroleague as it develops will be controlled by the actual adult leaders of each local team and will have no nationally imposed obstacles to membership or adult leadership status not based upon relevant improper conduct organizations accepting a charter may however impose certain additional standards for their own use of the program material should such organizations do so enviroleague will commit itself to forming as soon as possible new nearby teams having no such restrictions particularly as to youth membership enviroleague will operate on the principle that youth will have much to contribute to developing its programs thus the top youth leaders of its teams for middle and high school youth may become involved in governing any local administrative groups and those for its high school youth may be involved in similar functions at the national level program materials are in development at this time copies of the draft portions of the mentor s manual manual for adult leadership will be in the earth forum library these files will be updated as development takes place compuserve is particularly proud that enviroleague s founder chose this electronic medium to make the first public announcement of its formation this announcement is being made simultaneously in both the outdoor and earth forums the electronic home of enviroleague is in compuserve s earth forum go earth message and library areas both named enviroleague subsequently enviroleague s initial governance council has held its first meeting boyd critz was elected as the first enviroleague chief guardian equivalent to chairman of the board or ceo he can be reached at home in case of real need also mail can be addressed to enviroleague p o box peoria il those interested in starting an enviroleague team might just establish contact to receive a diskette ibm dos ascii with initial information cdt rocket sw stratus com if you believe that i speak for my company or cdt vos stratus com write today for my special investors packet

alt.atheism

idle questions for fellow atheists i wonder how many atheists out there care to speculate on the face of the world if atheists were the majority rather than the minority group of the population it is rather a ridiculous question in some ways i know but my newsreader is down so i am not getting any new postings for a bit so i figure i might as well post something new myself also how many atheists out there would actually take the stance and accor a higher value to their way of thinking over the theistic way of thinking the typical selfish argument would be that both lines of thinking evolved from the same inherent motivation so one is not intrinsically different from the other qualitatively but then again a measuring stick must be drawn somewhere and if we cannot assign value to a system of beliefs at its core than the only other alternative is to apply it to its periphery ie how it expresses its own selfishness idle thoughts adam adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws

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re americans and evolution in article apr dcs warwick ac uk simon dcs warwick ac uk simon clippingdale writes deleted over on alt atheism we tend to recognise two categories of atheism function format due to mathew mantis co uk i think i weak not believe gods ii strong believe not gods deleted i am a strong atheist and i must quibble with your assertion that the strong position requires faith i believe that no god s as commonly described by theists exist this belief is merely an opinion formed on the basis of observation including a certain amount of introspection i fully accept that i could be wrong and will be swayed by suitably convincing evidence thus while i believe that no gods exist this does not imply faith on my part that it is so let me first say that to believe that no gods exist is in fact different than not believing in a god or gods i will argue that your latter statement i believe that no gods exist does rest upon faith that is if you are making a positive statement that no gods exist strong atheism rather than merely saying i don t know and therefore don t believe in them and don t not believe in then weak atheism once again to not believe in god is different than saying i believe that god does not exist i still maintain the position even after reading the faqs that strong atheism requires faith but first let me say the following we might have a language problem here in regards to faith and existence i as a christian maintain that god does not exist to exist means to have being in space and time god does not have being god is being kierkegaard once said that god does not exist he is eternal with this said i feel it s rather pointless to debate the so called existence of god and that is not what i m doing here i believe that god is the source and ground of being when you say that god does not exist i also accept this statement but we obviously mean two different things by it however in what follows i will use the phrase the existence of god in it s usual sense and this is the sense that i think you are using it i would like a clarification upon what you mean by the existence of god we also might differ upon what it means to have faith here is what webster says faith a allegiance to duty or a person loyalty b fidelity to one s promises sincerity of intentions a belief and trust in and loyalty to god belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b firm belief in something for which there is no proof complete trust something that is believed esp with strong conviction esp a system of religious beliefs syn see belief one can never prove that god does or does not exist when you say that you believe god does not exist and that this is an opinion based upon observation i will have to ask what observtions are you refering to there are no observations pro or con that are valid here in establishing a positive belief all observations can only point you in a direction a direction that we might even be predisposed to by predisposed i mean for example people whoes partents believe in god also tend to to actually draw a conclusion about the existence or non existence of god requires a leap and you have made this leap when you actively say i believe that god does does not exist personally i think that both statements are misguided arguing over the existence of god is precisely the wrong way to find him and yes i use him because a personal god is the only viable concept imo if a person wants to use she go ahead of course god is neither he nor she but we have no choice but to anthropomorphise if you want me to explain myself further i ll be glad to and please if someone does not agree with me even if they violently disagree it s in no ones advantage to start name calling if a person thinks i ve misunderstood something in the faqs or if they they think i have not read them well enough just point out to me the error of my ways and i correct the situation i m interested in a polite and well thought out discussion cheers simon simon clippingdale simon dcs warwick ac uk department of computer science tel university of warwick fax coventry cv al u k bob singleton bobs thnext mit edu

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re genocide is caused by atheism snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes more horrible deaths resulted from atheism than anything else there are definitely quite a few horrible deaths as the result of both atheists and theists i m sure bobby can list quite a few for the atheist side but fails to recognize that the theists are equally proficient at genocide perhaps since i m a bit weak on history somone here would like to give a list of wars caused led by theists i can think of a few hitler claimed to be a christian for example but a more complete list would probably be more effective in showing bobby just how absurd his statement is peace on a side note i notice you always sign your posts peace perhaps you should take your own advice and leave the atheists in peace with their beliefs bobby mozumder nanci if you know and are sure of the author of this quote please send me email nm w andrew cmu edu lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others

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re dear mr theist west next cville wam umd edu stilgar writes means to me the full quote michael crichton jurrasic park was something like the earth has existed quite contently for billions of years we have been here but for the blink of an eye and if we were gone tomorrow the earth would not miss us i remember this quote to keep myself humble when thinking that we have progressed so far or that we are masters of this planet cool quote the earth doesn t need saving it s existed quite happily with out us we are the ones who need saving better watch it the theists will jump on you for that brian west this is not a sig file to the earth we have been this is not a sig file here but for the blink of an ok so it s a sig file eye if we were gone tomorrow posted by west wam umd edu we would not be missed who doesn t care who knows it jurassic park diclaimer i said this i meant this nobody made me do it nanci if you know and are sure of the author of this quote please send me email nm w andrew cmu edu lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others

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re political atheists my turn to jump in in article pi h innq gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes reference line trimmed livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes there is a good deal more confusion here you started off with the assertion that there was some objective morality and as you admit here you finished up with a recursive definition murder is objectively immoral but eactly what is murder and what is not itself requires an appeal to morality i think you mean circular not recursive but that is semantics recursiveness has no problems it is just horribly inefficient just ask any assembly programmer yes now you have switch targets a little but only a little now you are asking what is the goal what do you mean by goal are you suggesting that there is some objective goal out there somewhere and we form our morals to achieve it well for example the goal of natural morality is the survival and propogation of the species another example of a moral system is presented within the declaration of independence which states that we should be guaranteed life liberty and the pursuit of happiness you see to have a moral system we must define the purpose of the system that is we shall be moral unto what end the oft quoted line that says people should be guaranteed life liberty and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable rights is a complete lie and deception as the very authors of that line were in the process of proving liberty is never free it is always purchased at some cost almost always at the cost to another whos liberty is more inalienable similarly for right of life when one person must die if he is to save another or even a group of others whos life is more inalienable that leads into the classic question of the value of the death penalty especially for serial killers whos life and liberty is more valuable the serial killer or the victim according to that beautiful line those two rights should be completely inviolate that is noone should be able to remove them this includes government admittedly the serial killer has restricted some people s life and or liberty but is not his own life liberty inviolate also according to the declaration of independence it is murder is certainly a violation of the golden rule and i thought i had defined murder as an intentional killing of a non murderer against his will oooh i like that it means that killing an infant is not murder because it cannot be against its will reason an infant has no will as such similarly for people who are brain dead easier to see in a coma etc also under current law accidental killing is still murder how will you include that and you responded to this by asking whether or not the execution of an innocent person under our system of capital punishment was a murder or not i fail to see what this has to do with anything i never claimed that our system of morality was an objective one i thought that was your very first claim that there was some kind of objective morality and that an example of that was that murder is wrong if you don t want to claim that any more that s fine the only real golden rule in life is he who has the gold makes the rules i e might makes right that is survival now what is wrong with that well murder violates the golen rule which is certainly a pillar of most every moral system however i am not assuming that our current system and the manner of its implementation are objectively moral i think that it is a very good approximation but we can t be perfect if you mean the golden rule as i stated yes almost every system as implemented has used that in reality sorry i don t deal as much in fiction as i do in reality and by the way you don t seem to understand the difference between arbitrary and objective if keith schneider defines murder to be this that and the other that s arbitrary jon livesey may still say well according to my personal system of morality all killing of humans against their will is murder and wrong and what the legal definition of murder may be in the usa kuweit saudi arabia or the prc may be matters not a whit to me welcome to ozland what is not arbitrary if you can find some part of society some societal rules morals etc that are not arbitrary please tell me i don t think there are any well objective would assume a system based on clear and fundamental concepts while arbitary implies no clear line of reasoning keith sounds like euphemisms to me the difference seems to be that objective is some reasoning that i like while arbitrary is some reasoning that i don t like or don t understand m

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re radical agnostic not the one and only jcopelan nyx cs du edu wrote in article dl m bgsu edu dl andy bgsu edu pixie writes first post i ve seen from the ol bug zoo bgsu there is no means that i can possibly think of to prove beyond doubt that a god does not exist but if anyone has one by all means tell me what it is therefore lacking this ability of absolute proof being an atheist becomes an act of faith in and of itself and this i cannot accept i accept nothing on blind faith invisible pink flying unicorns need i say more there is also the question of what is meant by atheist a familiar example of the importance of the meaning of the word is as follows the two statements following are consistent i do not believe that you are wearing lilac socks i do not believe that you are are not wearing lilac socks the two statements following are not consistent i do believe that you are wearing lilac socks i do believe that you are are not wearing lilac socks statements and require no faith they make no presumptions about the nature of reality statements and require belief many atheists myself included take the following position i do not believe that there is a god i do not believe that there is not a god that is i harbor no beliefs at all there is no good evidence for god existing or not some folks call this agnosticism it does not suffer from blind faith at all i think of it as don t worry be happy

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so what is maddi as i was created in the image of gaea therefore i must be the pinnacle of creation she which creates she which births she which continues or to cut all the religious crap i m a woman thanks and it s sexism that started me on the road to atheism maddi hausmann madhaus netcom com centigram communications corp san jose california kids please don t try this at home remember i post professionally

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re the wrong and the right in article e trmetu bitnet e trmetu bitnet writes hi i m a turkish guy who had tried atheism satenism and buddism at some instant s of hislife finally i decided on islambecause of many facts which i intend to write here from my point of view you atheists are people who has dropped to a deep dark well and thinking the only reality is the dusty walls of the well but if you had looked a little bit upward you would see the blue skies you dsee t he truth but you close your eyes allah is the only god and mohammed is his mess ager now let s generate some entropy in means of theology and thermodynamics w hat s your point of view to the problem of the first kiss that is the first spark which was generated for the formation of the universe has it formed by i tself you are bothering yourselves with the big bang but where is the first spa rk please think a bit think and return to the only reality of the universe isla m uh oh this looks a bit too much like bobby s atheism is false stuff are we really going to have to go through this again maybe the universe is cyclical brendan dunn

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re political atheists bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes and in the us even that argument doesn t stand it costs far more to execute a criminal in this country than it does to feed clothe and shelter them for the remainder of their natural life some people believe this is a fault of our judicial system i find it to be one of it s greatest virtues i assume that you are talking about the appeals processes etc well it should be noted that people who are imprisoned for life will also tend to appeal though not quite as much in the final hours anyway economics is not a very good reason to either favor or oppose the punishment keith

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re americans and evolution in article apr skyblu ccit arizona edu lippard skyblu ccit arizona edu james j lippard writes in article mar juliet caltech edu lmh juliet caltech edu henling lawrence m writes atheism greek a not theos god belief that there is no god agnosticism greek a not gnostein know belief that it is not possible to determine if there is a god no agnosticism as you have here defined it is a positive belief a belief that it is not possible to determine the existence of any gods that s a belief i m inclined to reject you have also defined atheism here as a positive belief that there is no god a fairly large number of atheists on alt atheism reject this definition instead holding that atheism is simply the absence of belief in a god michael martin in atheism a philosophical justification distinguishes strong atheism my mistake i will have to get a newer dictionary and read the follow up line larry henling lmh shakes caltech edu

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re political atheists reference line trimmed ssauyet eagle wesleyan edu scott d sauyet writes first i ll make the assumption that you agree that a murderer is one who has commited murder well i d say that a murderer is one who intentionally committed a murder for instance if you put a bullet into a gun that was thought to contain blanks and someone was killed with such a gun the person who actually performed the action isn t the murderer but i guess this is actually made clear in the below definition i d be interested to see a more reasonable definition what do you mean by reasonable otherwise your inductive definition doesn t bottom out your definition in essence is that murder is the intentional killing of someone who has not commited murder against his will expanding the second occurence of murder in the above we see that yes it is bad to include the word being defined in the definition but even though the series is recursively infinite i think the meaning can still be deduced i assume you can see the problem here to do a correct inductive definition you must define something in terms of a simpler case and you must have one or several bottoming out cases for instance we can define the factorial function the function which assigns to a positive integer the product of the positive integers less than or equal to it on the positive integers inductively as follows math lesson deleted okay let s look at this situation suppose there is a longstanding feud between two families which claim that the other committed some travesty in the distant past each time a member of the one family kills a member of the other the other family thinks that it is justified in killing a that member of the first family now let s suppose that this sequence has occurred an infinite number of times or if you don t like dealing with infinities suppose that one member of the family goes back into time and essentially begins the whole thing that is there is a never ending loop of slayings based on some non existent travesty how do you resolve this well they are all murders now i suppose that this isn t totally applicable to your problem but it still is possible to reduce an uninduced system and in any case the nested murderer in the definition of murder cannot be infintely recursive given the finite existence of humanity and a murder cannot be committed without a killing involved so the first person to intentionally cause someone to get killed is necessarily a murderer is this enough of an induction to solve the apparently unreducable definition see in a totally objective system where all the information is available such a nested definition isn t really a problem keith

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re political atheists in article pigidinnsot gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes mathew mathew mantis co uk writes as for rape surely there the burden of guilt is solely on the rapist not so if you are thrown into a cage with a tiger and get mauled do you blame the tiger a human has greater control over his her actions than a predominately instictive tiger a proper analogy would be if you are thrown into a cage with a person and get mauled do you blame that person yes providing that that person was in a responsible frame of mind eg not clinicaly insane on pcb s etc one thing that relates is among navy men that get tatoos that say mom because of the love of their mom it makes for more virile men bobby mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu april the one true muslim left in the world

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re idle questions for fellow atheists in article apr mac cc macalstr edu acooper mac cc macalstr edu writes i wonder how many atheists out there care to speculate on the face of the world if atheists were the majority rather than the minority group of the population probably we would have much the same problems with only a slight shift in emphasis weekends might not be so inviolate more common to work days a week in a business and instead of american atheists we would have similar religious organizations a persons religious belief seems more as a crutch and justification for actions than a guide to determine actions of course people would have to come up with more fascinating rationalizations for their actions but that could be fun to watch it seems to me that for most people religion in america doesn t matter that much you have extreemists on both ends but a large majority don t make too much of an issue about it as long as you don t now admittedly i have never had to suffer the bible belt but i am just north of it and see the fringes and the reasonable people in most things tend to be reasonable in religion as well also how many atheists out there would actually take the stance and accor a higher value to their way of thinking over the theistic way of thinking the typical selfish argument would be that both lines of thinking evolved from the same inherent motivation so one is not intrinsically different from the other qualitatively but then again a measuring stick must be drawn somewhere and if we cannot assign value to a system of beliefs at its core than the only other alternative is to apply it to its periphery ie how it expresses its own selfishness i don t bother according a higher value to my thinking or just about anybodys thinking i don t want to fall in that trap because if you do start that then you are then to decide which is better says whom why is there a best and also what to do about those who have inferior modes of thinking idic infinite diversity in infinite combinations i ll argue it over a soda but not over much more just my what inflation has done m

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re the problem of satan used to be islamic authority over women in article apr news unomaha edu trajan cwis unomaha edu stephen mcintyre writes of course bobby then states that satan has no free will that he does as god wants him to this brings up a host of paradoxes is god therefore evil do i have free will or is god directing me also if god is evil which part of his infinite self is good and which is evil etc i would like for once a solid answer not a run about i hope i gave you a fairly solid answer to this one i simply don t agree with the embodied version of a satan who is a separate creation or a force i wrote the belief to which i ascribe is that evil is not a creation rather it is the absence of good this fits with all the logic about things having dual use e g a knife can be used to sculpt and it can be used to kill like entropy evil is seen in this view as neither force nor entity satan is therefore metaphorical in fact there are several verses of the holy qur an which appear to support this view and several traditions as well for example there is a tradition that food should never be left open on a shelf or table overnight lest satan enter it it appears that this is a reference to as yet undiscovered germs thus the evil effect of spoiled food is described as satan but there are many examples of satan personified which am i to believe and there are quite physical descriptions of heaven and hell in the holy qur an the bible etc there have been times in the spiritual and intellectual evolution of the modern human when these physical descriptions of heaven hell and satan were taken quite literally and that worked for the time as i mentioned in the tradition cited above for example it was sufficient in the absence of a theory about germs and disease spread by worms to simply describe the evil which was passed to a consumer of spoiled food as satanic which begs the question if satan in this case is metaphorical how can you be certain allah is not the same way the bottom line here however is that describing a spiritual plane in human language is something like describing color to a person who has been blind from birth you may want to read the book flatland if you haven t already or the dragon s egg the first is intended as a light hearted description of a mathematical con cept some deleted for space saving when language fails because it cannot be used to adequately describe another dimension which cannot be experienced by the speakers then such conventions as metaphor allegory and the like come to be necessary the unseen is described in terms which have reference and meaning for the reader listener but like all models a compro mise must be made when speaking metaphorically clarity and directness of meaning equivalence of perception and the like are all crippled but what else can you do this is why i asked the above how would you then know god exists as a spirit or being rather than just being metaphorical i mean it s okay to say well satan is just metaphorical but then you have to justify this belief and justify that god is not some metaphor for something else i say this because there are many many instances of satan described as a being such as the tormentor in the old testament book of job or the temptor in the new testament gospels in the same way god too is described as a being or spirit how am i to know one is metaphorical and not the other further belief in god isn t a bar to evil let s consider the case of satanists even if satan were metaphorical the satanist would have to believe in god to justify this belief again we have a case where someone does believe in god but by religious standards they are evil if bobby does see this let him address this question also deleted some more on metaphor obviously more philosophizing on this issue is possible but i m not sure that the readers of this newsgroup would want to delve into religious interpretation further however if anyone wishes to discuss this i m certainly willing either off line e mail or on line posting stephen atheist libertarian pro individuality pro responsibility jr and all that jazz

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re soc motss et al princeton axes matching funds for boy scouts in article pmjo inn l lynx unm edu bevans carina unm edu mathemagician writes just what do gay people do that straight people don t absolutely nothing i m a very straight as an arrow year old male that is involved in the bsa i don t care what gay people do among each other as long as they don t make passes at me or anything at my summer camp where i work my boss is gay not in a pansy way of gay i know a few but just one of the guys he doesn t push anything on me and we give him the same respect back due to his position if anything the bsa has taught me i don t know tolerance or something before i met this guy i thought all gays were faries so the bsa has taught me to be an antibigot basically it comes down to this what you do among yourself is your own business no one else has the right to tell you otherwise unless it violates someone else s civil rights

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re gospel dating date mon apr gmt from stilgar west next cville wam umd edu in article kmr po cwru edu kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes in article apr wam umd edu west next cville wam umd edu stilgar writes the illiad is the undisputed word of god tm prove me wrong i dispute it ergo by counter example you are proven wrong i dispute your counter example ergo by counter counter example you are wrong and i am right so nanny nanny boo boo tbbbbbbbtttttthhhhh p this looks like a serious case of temporary islam

alt.atheism

a word of advice in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes i ve said enough times that there is no alternative that should think you might have caught on by now and there is no alternative but the point is rationality isn t an alternative either the problems of metaphysical and religious knowledge are unsolvable or i should say humans cannot solve them how does that saying go those who say it can t be done shouldn t interrupt those who are doing it jim have you washed your brain today

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re concerning god s morality long jbrown batman bmd trw com writes sorry but there are no supernatural forces necessary to create a pathogen you are saying since diseases are bad the bad entity must have created it so what would you say about acid rain meteors falling from the sky volcanoes earthquakes and other quote unquote acts of god i would say that they are not acts of god but natural occurrences it amazes me that you have the audacity to say that human creation was not the result of the natural process of evolution but rather an act of god and then in the same post say that these other processes volcanos et al are natural occurrences who gave you the right to choose what things are natural processes and what are direct acts of god how do you know that god doesn t cause each and every natural disaster with a specific purpose in mind it would certainly go along with the sadistic nature i ve seen in the bible even if satan had nothing to do with the original inception of disease evolution by random chance would have produced them since humanity forsook god s protection if we choose to live apart from god s law humanity collectively then it should come as no surprise that there are adverse consequences to our collective action one of these is that we are left to deal with disease and disorders which inevitably result in an entropic universe may i ask where is this collective bullcrap coming from by collective i was referring to the idea that god works with humanity on two levels individually and collectively if mankind as a whole decides to undertake a certain action the majority of mankind then god will allow the consequences of that action to affect mankind as a whole adam eve two people even tho they had the honor or so you christians claim of being the first two definitely do not represent a majority in the billions and trillions probably more of people that have come after them perhaps they were the majority then but i and you weren t around to vote and perhaps we might have voted differently about what to do with that tree but your god never asked us he just assumes that if you have two bad people then they all must be bad hmm sounds like the same kind of false generalization that i see many of the theists posting here resorting to so that s where they get it shoulda known jim b nanci if you know and are sure of the author of this quote please send me email nm w andrew cmu edu lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others

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re islamic authority over women in article apr ultb isc rit edu snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes that s your mistake it would be better for the children if the mother raised the child one thing that relates is among navy men that get tatoos that say mom because of the love of their mom it makes for more virile men compare that with how homos are raised do a study and you will get my point but in no way do you have a claim that it would be better if the men stayed home and raised the child that is something false made up by feminists that seek a status above men you do not recognize the fact that men and women have natural differences not just physically but mentally also your logic i didn t say americans were the cause of worlds problems i said atheists becuase they have no code of ethics to follow which means that atheists can do whatever they want which they feel is right something totally based on their feelings and those feelings cloud their rational thinking yeah i didn t say that all atheists are bad but that they could be bad or good with nothing to define bad or good awright bobby s back in all of his shit for brains glory just when i thought he d turned the corner of progress his thorazine prescription runs out i d put him in my kill file but man this is good stuff i wish i had his staying power fortunately i learned not to take him too seriously long long long ago bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

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re islamic authority over women in article apr ultb isc rit edu snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes peace bobby get this the hell out of your sig until you learn what it stands for and really mean it bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

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omnipotence was re speculations in article p psilink com robert knowles p psilink com writes date fri apr from nanci ann miller nm w andrew cmu edu can god uncreate itself no for if he did he would violate his own nature which he cannot do it is god s nature to exist he is after all the i am which is a statement of his inherent existence he is existence itself existence cannot not exist then as mentioned above he must not be very omnipotent what do you mean by omnipotent here do you mean by omnipotent that god should be able to do anything everything this creates a self contradictory definition of omnipotence which is effectively useless to be descriptive omnipotence must mean being all powerful and not being able to do anything everything let me illustrate by analogy suppose the united states were the only nuclear power on earth suppose further that the us military could not effectively be countered by any nation or group of nations the us has the power to go into any country at any time for any reason to straighten things out as the leaders of the us see fit the us would be militarily omnipotent but suppose further that the us holds to a doctrine philosophy of not interfering in the internal affairs of any nation such as the current civil war in the former yugoslavian states technically in this scenario the us would have the power to unilaterally go into yugoslavia and straighten out the mess but effectively the us could not intervene without violating its own policy of non interference if the policy of non interference were held to strongly enough then there would never be a question that it would ever be violated effectively the us would be limited in what it could actually do although it had the power to do whatever it wanted the us would simply never want to interfere for such an idea would be beyond the consideration of its leaders given such an inviolate non interference policy god is effectively limited in the same sense he is all powerful but he cannot use his power in a way that would violate the essence of what he himself is i hope this helps to clear up some of the misunderstanding concerning omnipotence regards jim b

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re islamic marriage in article apr cadence com mas cadence com masud khan writes in article c qav wg austin ibm com karner austin ibm com f karner writes okay so you want me to name names there are obviously no official records of these pseudo marriages because they are performed for convenience what happens typically is that the woman is willing to move in with her lover without any scruples or legal contracts to speak of the man is merely utilizing a loophole by entering into a temporary religious marriage contract in order to have sex nobody complains nobody cares nobody needs to know perhaps you should alert your imam it could be that this practice is far more widespread than you may think or maybe it takes muslim men to witness the penetration to decide if the practice exists again you astound me with the level of ignorance you display muslims are not allowed to enter temporary marriages got that there is no evidence for it it an outlawed practise so get your facts straight buddy give me references for it or just tell everyone you were lying it is not a widespread as you may think fantasise in fact contrary to your fantasies it is not practised at all amongst muslims first of all i m not your buddy second read what i wrote i m not talking about what muslims are allowed to do merely what some practice they consider themselves as muslim as you so don t retort with the old and tired they must not be true muslims bullshit if i gave you the names what will you do with this information is a fatwa going to be leashed out against the perpetrators do you honestly think that someone who did it would voluntarily come forward and confess with the kind of extremism shown by your co religionaries fat chance at any rate there can be no conclusive proof by the very nature of the act perhaps people that indulge in this practice agree with you in theory but hope that allah will forgive them in the end i think it s rather arrogant of you to pretend to speak for all muslims in this regard also kind of silly are you insinuating that because the koranic law forbids it there are no criminals in muslim countries this is as far as i care to go on this subject the weakness of your arguments are for all netters to see over and out disclaimer the opinions expressed in this posting are mine solely and do not represent my employer in any way f a karner aix technical support karner austin vnet ibm com

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re political atheists in article pi h innq gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes reference line trimmed livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes there is a good deal more confusion here you started off with the assertion that there was some objective morality and as you admit here you finished up with a recursive definition murder is objectively immoral but eactly what is murder and what is not itself requires an appeal to morality yes now you have switch targets a little but only a little now you are asking what is the goal what do you mean by goal are you suggesting that there is some objective goal out there somewhere and we form our morals to achieve it well for example the goal of natural morality is the survival and propogation of the species i got just this far what do you mean by goal i hope you don t mean to imply that evolution has a conscious goal jon

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re political atheists in article pic linnrau gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes my personal objection is that i find capital punishment to be cruel and unusual punishment under all circumstances it can be painless so it isn t cruel and it has occurred frequently since the dawn of time so it is hardly unusual koff you mean that as long as i put you to sleep first i can kill you without being cruel this changes everything jon

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re political atheists in article pieg inns gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes now along comes mr keith schneider and says here is an objective moral system and then i start to ask him about the definitions that this objective system depends on and predictably the whole thing falls apart it only falls apart if you attempt to apply it this doesn t mean that an objective system can t exist it just means that one cannot be implemented it s not the fact that it can t exist that bothers me it s the fact that you don t seem to be able to define it if i wanted to hear about indefinable things that might in principle exist as long as you don t think about them too carefully i could ask a religious person now couldn t i jon

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re pompous ass in article pi btinnqa gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes then why do people keep asking the same questions over and over because you rarely ever answer them nope i ve answered each question posed and most were answered multiple times he fifty dollars if i can t answer your question she what is the big bang theory he the big bang theory is a recipe for cookies she fifty dollars please he hey i didn t say the answers would make sense jon

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re pompous ass in article pi jkinnqe gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes how long does it the motto have to stay around before it becomes the default where s the cutoff point i don t know where the exact cutoff is but it is at least after a few years and surely after years why does the notion of default not take into account changes in population makeup specifically which changes are you talking about are you arguing that the motto is interpreted as offensive by a larger portion of the population now than years ago no do i have to i m just commenting that it makes very little sense to consider everything we inherit to be the default seen any steam trains recently jon

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re concerning god s morality long in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com responds to a lot of grief given to him in article apr leland stanford edu galahad leland stanford edu scott compton a k a the sagemaster but then i ask so where is this relevant to my discussion in answering john s question of why why are there genetic diseases and why are there so many bacterial and viral diseases which require babies to develop antibodies is it god s fault the original question i say no it is not most of scotty s followup was irrelevant to the original question but this is not unusual as threads often quickly evolve away from the original topic what i could not understand is why jim spent so much time responding to what he regarded as irrelevancies may i ask where is this collective bullcrap coming from by collective i was referring to the idea that god works with humanity on two levels individually and collectively if mankind as a whole decides to undertake a certain action the majority of mankind well i guess hypothetical adam was the majority of mankind seeing how he was the only man at the time then god will allow the consequences of that action to affect mankind as a whole if you didn t understand that then i apologize for not using one and two syllable words in my discussion i understand what you mean by collective but i think it is an insane perversion of justice what sort of judge would punish the descendants for a crime committed by their ancestor if you want to be sure that i read your post and to provide a response send a copy to jim brown oz bmd trw com i can t read a a every day and some posts slip by thanks well i must admit that you probably read a a more often than i read the bible these days but you missed a couple of good followups to your post i m sending you a personal copy of my followup which i hope you will respond to publically in a a john the sageless

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re jews can t hide from keith cco in article apr bmerh bnr ca dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham writes in article pj b aaa fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article apr bmerh bnr ca dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham writes er jon what ken said was there have previously been people like you in your country unfortunately most jews did not survive that sure sounds to me like ken is accusing the guy of being a nazi my previous posting deleted yes yes this is a perfectly fine rant and i agree with it completely but what does it have to do with anything the issue at hand here is whether or not ken accused the fellow from germany of being a nazi i grant that he did not explicity make this accusation but he came pretty damn close he is certainly accusing the guy of sympathizing with those who would like to exterminate the jews and that s good enough for me the poster casually trashed two thousand years of jewish history and ken replied that there had previously been people like him in germany that s right there have been there have also been people who were formally nazis but the nazi party would have gone nowhere without the active and tacit support of the ordinary man in the street who behaved as though casual anti semitism was perfectly acceptable now what exactly don t you understand about what i wrote and why don t you see what it has to do with the matter at hand jon

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re jews can t hide from keith cco in article apr mac cc macalstr edu acooper mac cc macalstr edu writes in article pint l fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes well germany was hardly the only country to discriminate against the jews although it has the worst reputation because it did the best job of expressing a general european dislike of them this should not turn into a debate on antisemitism but you should also point out that luther s antisemitism was based on religious grounds while hitler s was on racial grounds and wagnmer s on aesthetic grounds just blanketing the whole group is poor analysis even if they all are bigots i find these to be intriguing remarks could you give us a bit more explanation here for example which religion is anti semitic and which aesthetic jon

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re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes in p ivt cfj fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes should we british go around blowing up skyscrapers next i don t know if you are doing so but it seems you are implying that the person accused of blowing up the wtc in ny actually did it and that islamic teachings have something to do with blowing up the wtc i was replying to a person who attempted to justify the fatwa against rushdie on the grounds that his work was intentionally insulting i think that to take a single sentence from a fairly long posting and to say i don t know if you are doing so but it seems you are implying is at the very best quite disingenuous and perhaps even dishonest if anyone care to dig back and read the full posting they will see nothing of the kind i trust you don t deny that islamic teaching has something to do with the fatwa against rushdie jon

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re an anecdote about islam in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes i don t understand the point of this petty sarcasm it is a basic principle of islam that if one is born muslim or one says i testify that there is no god but god and mohammad is a prophet of god that so long as one does not explicitly reject islam by word then one must be considered muslim by all muslims so the phenomenon you re attempting to make into a general rule or psychology is a direct odds with basic islamic principles if you want to attack islam you could do better than than to argue against something that islam explicitly contradicts then mr mozumder is incorrect when he says that when committing bad acts people temporarily become atheists jon

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re genocide is caused by atheism snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes if saddam believed in god he would pray five times a day communism on the other hand actually committed genocide in the name of atheism as lenin and stalin have said themselves these two were die hard atheist look a pun and believed in atheism as an integral part of communism no bobby stalin killed millions in the name of socialism atheism was a characteristic of the lenin stalin version of socialism nothing more another characteristic of lenin stalin socialism was the centralization of food distribution would you therefore say that stalin and lenin killed millions in the name of rationing bread of course not more horrible deaths resulted from atheism than anything else in earlier posts you stated that true muslim believers were incapable of evil i suppose if you believe that you could reason that no one has ever been killed in the name of religion what a perfect world you live in bobby one of the reasons that you are atheist is that you limit god by giving god a form god does not have a face bobby is referring to a rather obscure law in the good atheist s handbook law xxvi a give that which you do not believe in a face you must excuse us bobby when we argue against theism we usually argue against the christian idea of god in the realm of christianity man was created in god s image kevin marshall sophomore computer science virginia tech blacksburg va usa marshall csugrad cs vt edu

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re the list of biblical contradictions joslin pogo isp pitt edu david joslin writes someone writes i found a list of biblical contradictions and cleaned it up a bit but now i d like some help with it i m curious to know what purpose people think these lists serve it s about time why do atheists spend so much time paying attention to the bible anyway face it there are better things to do with your life i used to chuckle and snort over the silliness in that book and the absurdity of people believing in it as truth etc why do we spend so little time on the mayan religion or the native americans heck the native americans have signifigantly more interesting myths also what about the egyptians i think we pay so much attention to christianity because we accept it as a religion and not a mythology which i find more accurate i try to be tolerant it gets very hard when someone places a book under my nose and tells me it s special it s not carolyn

alt.atheism

re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses on apr mst jbrown batman bmd trw com said god is eternal a b jesus is god c a therefore jesus is eternal c b this works both logically and mathematically god is of the set of things which are eternal jesus is a subset of god therefore jesus belongs to the set of things which are eternal everything isn t always so logical mercedes is a car that girl is mercedes therefore that girl is a car heikki

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re political atheists in article k rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mantis co uk mathew writes in article apr blaze cs jhu edu arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes the automobile system kills non driving passengers not to mention pedestrians you need not drive or even use a car to be killed by one indeed and it kills far more than a system of public transport would i am therefore entirely in favour of banning private cars and replacing them with trains buses taxis bicycles and so on seconded i cycle to work each day and if we could just get those damned cars and their cretinous drivers off the road it would be a lot more fun jon

alt.atheism

re political atheists in article h rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mantis co uk mathew writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes and we meaning people who drive accept the risks of doing so and contribute tax money to design systems to minimize those risks eh we already have systems to minimize those risks it s just that you car drivers don t want to use them they re called bicycles trains and buses poor matthew a million posters to call you car drivers and he chooses me a non car owner jon

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re omnipotence was re speculations in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes in article p psilink com robert knowles p psilink com writes date fri apr from nanci ann miller nm w andrew cmu edu can god uncreate itself no for if he did he would violate his own nature which he cannot do it is god s nature to exist he is after all the i am which is a statement of his inherent existence he is existence itself existence cannot not exist then as mentioned above he must not be very omnipotent what do you mean by omnipotent here do you mean by omnipotent that god should be able to do anything everything this creates a self contradictory definition of omnipotence which is effectively useless to be descriptive omnipotence must mean being all powerful and not being able to do anything everything let me illustrate by analogy suppose the united states were the only nuclear power on earth suppose further that the us military could not effectively be countered by any nation or group of nations the us has the power to go into any country at any time for any reason to straighten things out as the leaders of the us see fit the us would be militarily omnipotent did you check with the afghans before posting this they might disagree jon

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re a little too satanic mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes nanci ann miller writes my favorite reply to the you are being too literal minded complaint is that if the bible is really inspired by god and if it is really that important to him then he would make damn certain all the translators and scribes and people interpreting and copying it were getting it right literally if not then why should i put any merit at all in something that has been corrupted over and over and over by man even if it was originally inspired by god the corrupted over and over theory is pretty weak comparison of the current hebrew text with old versions and translations shows that the text has in fact changed very little over a space of some two millennia this shouldn t be all that suprising people who believe in a text in this manner are likely to makes some pains to make good copies do you honestly hold to that tripe charley for a start there are enough current versions of the bible to make comparisons to show that what you write above is utter garbage witness jw mormon catholic anglican and greek orthodox bibles but to really convince you i d have to take you to a good old library in our local library we had a king james which i compared to a brand new hot of god s tongue good news bible genesis was almost unrecognisable many of the discrepencies between the four gospels had been edited from the good news bible in fact the god of good news was a much more congenial fellow i must say if you like i ll get the king james out again and actually give you some quotes at least the headings haven t changed much jeff

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re ancient islamic rituals cfaehl vesta unm edu chris faehl writes why is it more reasonable than the trend towards obesity and the trend towards depression you can t just pick your two favorite trends notice a correlation in them and make a sweeping statement of generality i mean you can and people have but that does not mean that it is a valid or reasonable thesis at best it s a gross oversimplification of the push pull factors people experience i agree i reckon it s television and the increase in fundamentalism you think its the increase in pre marital sex others thinks its because psychologists have taken over the criminal justice system and let violent criminals con them into letting them out into the streets others think it s the increase in designer drugs others think it s a communist plot basically the social interactions of all the changing factors in our society are far too complicated for us to control we just have to hold on to the panic handles and hope that we are heading for a soft landing but one things for sure depression and the destruction of the nuclear family is not due solely to sex out of marriage jeff fred rice a muslim giving his point of view darice yoyo cc monash edu au cfaehl vesta unm edu

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re americans and evolution in article apr njitgw njit edu dmu hertz njit edu david utidjian eng sci writes in article mar juliet caltech edu lmh juliet caltech edu henling lawrence m writes for a complete description of what is and is not atheism or agnosticism see the faq for alt atheism in alt answers i think utidjian remarque berkeley edu i apologize for posting this i thought it was only going to talk origins i also took my definitions from a websters nonetheless the apparent past arguments over these words imply that like bimonthly and biweekly they have no commonly accepted definitions and should be used with care larry henling lmh shakes caltech edu

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re jews can t hide from keith cco in article pj b aaa fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article apr bmerh bnr ca dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham writes in article pint l fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes deletions er jon what ken said was there have previously been people like you in your country unfortunately most jews did not survive that sure sounds to me like ken is accusing the guy of being a nazi hitler and the nazis didn t spring fully formed from the forehead of athena they didn t invent anti semitism they built on a foundation of anti semitism that was already present in germany this foundation of anti semitism was laid down not by the nazis but by the people i listed and also by hundreds of years of unthinking knee jerk bigotry on the part of perfectly ordinary people and of course their pastors and priests what we have to worry about today is not whether some hollywood hitler in a black uniform is going to come striding onto the german stage in one unprepared step but whether those same bedrock foundations of anti semitism are being laid down little by little in germany as we speak and if so they will be laid down not by hitlers and himmlers who will come later but by people like the poster in question the people who think that casual anti semitism is acceptable or even fun deletions i did now may i suggest with the greatest possible respect that you go read some history jon so you consider the german poster s remark anti semitic perhaps you imply that anyone in germany who doesn t agree with israely policy in a nazi pray tell how does it even qualify as casual anti semitism if the term doesn t apply why then bring it up your own bigotry is shining through disclaimer the opinions expressed in this posting are mine solely and do not represent my employer in any way f a karner aix technical support karner austin vnet ibm com

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re omnipotence was re speculations in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes god is effectively limited in the same sense he is all powerful but he cannot use his power in a way that would violate the essence of what he himself is cannot try will not one thing that relates is among navy men that get tatoos that say mom because of the love of their mom it makes for more virile men bobby mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu april the one true muslim left in the world

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re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses in article suopanki apr stekt oulu fi suopanki stekt oulu fi heikki t suopanki writes god is eternal a b jesus is god c a therefore jesus is eternal c b this works both logically and mathematically god is of the set of things which are eternal jesus is a subset of god therefore jesus belongs to the set of things which are eternal everything isn t always so logical mercedes is a car that girl is mercedes therefore that girl is a car this is not strickly correct only by incorrect application of the rules of language does it seem to work the mercedes in the first premis and the one in the second are not the same mercedes in your case a b c d a and d are not equal one is a name of a person the other the name of a object you can not simply extract a word without taking the context into account of course your case doesn t imply that a d in his case a does equal d try again one thing that relates is among navy men that get tatoos that say mom because of the love of their mom it makes for more virile men bobby mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu april the one true muslim left in the world

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islam vs the jehovah s witnesses in article apr princeton edu qpliu princeton edu writes in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes but god created lucifer with a perfect nature and gave him along with the other angels free moral will now god could have prevented lucifer s fall by taking away his ability to choose between moral alternatives worship god or worship himself so lucifer s moral choices are determined by his will what determines what his will is qpliu princeton edu standard opinion opinions are delta correlated bobby a few posts ago you said that lucifer had no free will from the above it seems the jw believes the contrary are you talking about the same lucifer if so can you suggest an experiment to determine which of you is wrong or do you claim that you are both right norman

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re had to share this in article apr acme gen nz kilroy acme gen nz earthbound misfit i writes bena dec cs monash edu au ben aveling writes warning if you are anything like a devout christian this post is really going to offend and or upset you numerous ctrl ls deleted hehehe i assume everyone here is familiar with the christian fish symbol the one on the back of all those volvos the one that looks something like or perhaps more like well i found out this morning where it comes from it s been stolen from the pagans like so much else last last chance to be blisfully ignorant hmm how can i put it well it comes from this sigh i hate drawing with ascii chars still i think you can work it out from there if you haven t go read skinny legs and all by tom robbins if he s even accurate then most of the modern religions have been appropriated it s also a great book followups to alt atheism whose readers are probably slightly more authorative on this k craig harding kilroy acme gen nz acme bbs jub er lbh pnyyvat n obmb craig i thought it was derived from a greek acronym my greek isn t up to much but it goes something like this jesus christ god iesus christos theos ichthos which is the greek for fish as in eg ichthysaurus apologies for my dreadful greek perhaps someone will correct it by the way what does your sig mean norman

alt.atheism

re genocide is caused by atheism in article apr ultb isc rit edu snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes one of the reasons that you are atheist is that you limit god by giving god a form god does not have a face wait a minute i thought you said that allah i presume allah god was unknowable and yet here you are claiming to know a very concrete fact about him you say that god does not have a face doesn t the bible say that god has hindparts how do you suggest i decide which if any of you is right or are you both right god has hindparts but no face or does your use of quotation marks god does not have a face allow you to interpret this to mean whatever you like peace bobby mozumder norman

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re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes in article ba da i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes but could you give a definition of free will especially in the presence of an omniscient being will is self determination in other words god created conscious beings who have the ability to choose between moral choices independently of god all will therefore is free will so these hypothetical conscious beings can ignore any influences of their circumstances their genetics their environment their experiences which are not all self determined of course the idea of hell makes the idea of free will dubious on the other hand the idea of hell is not a very powerful idea a parable for you there was once our main character who blah blah blah one day a thug pointed a mean looking gun at omc and said do what i say or i m blasting you to hell omc thought if i believe this thug and follow the instructions that will be given i ll avoid getting blasted to hell on the other hand if i believe this thug and do not follow the instructions that will be given i ll get blasted to hell hmm the more attractive choice is obvious i ll follow the instructions now omc found the choice obvious because everything omc had learned about getting blasted to hell made it appear very undesirable but then omc noticed that the thug s gun wasn t a real gun the thug s threats were make believe so omc ignored the thug and resumed blah blah blah qpliu princeton edu standard opinion opinions are delta correlated

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re gospel dating in article kmr po cwru edu kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes in article apr wam umd edu west next cville wam umd edu stilgar writes in article kmr po cwru edu kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes in article apr wam umd edu west next cville wam umd edu stilgar writes the illiad is the undisputed word of god tm prove me wrong i dispute it ergo by counter example you are proven wrong i dispute your counter example ergo by counter counter example you are wrong and i am right so nanny nanny boo boo tbbbbbbbtttttthhhhh no the premis stated that it was undisputed fine the illiad is the word of god tm disputed or not it is dispute that it won t matter prove me wrong brian west this is not a sig file to the earth we have been this is not a sig file here but for the blink of an ok so it s a sig file eye if we were gone tomorrow posted by west wam umd edu we would not be missed who doesn t care who knows it jurassic park diclaimer i said this i meant this nobody made me do it

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re gospel dating in article apr wam umd edu west next cville wam umd edu stilgar writes fine the illiad is the word of god tm disputed or not it is dispute that it won t matter prove me wrong the illiad contains more than one word ergo it can not be the word of god but if you will humbly agree that it is the words of god i will conceed d one thing that relates is among navy men that get tatoos that say mom because of the love of their mom it makes for more virile men bobby mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu april the one true muslim left in the world

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re americans and evolution in article pik i l fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article c u l bv darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes why do you spend so much time posting here if your atheism is so incidental if the question of god is trivial fess up it matters to you a great deal ask yourself two questions how important is mithras in your life today how important would mithras become if there was a well funded group of fanatics trying to get the schools system to teach your children that mithras was the one true god jon right on jon who cares who or whose as long as it works for the individual but don t try to impose those beliefs on us or our children i would add the well funded group tries also to purge science to deny children access to great wonders and skills and how about the kids born to creationists what a burden with which to begin adult life it must be a cruel awakening for those who finally see the light provided it is possible to escape from the depths of this type of ignorance

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re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses jbrown batman bmd trw com writes my syllogism is of the form a is b c is a therefore c is b this is a logically valid construction your syllogism however is of the form a is b c is b therefore c is a therefore yours is a logically invalid construction and your comments don t apply i appeal to mathew mantis here who wrote the excellent post now part of the faq on logical argument jim b i am not mathew mantis but any successful first year logic student will see that you are logically correct the other poster is logically incorrect i know is nothing more than i believe with pretentions

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re concerning god s morality was americans and evolution in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes why do babies get diseases etc what god did create was life according to a protein code which is mutable and can evolve without delving into a deep discussion of creationism vs evolutionism here s the main problem the scenario you outline is reasonably consistent but all the evidence that i am familiar with not only does not support it but indicates something far different the earth by latest estimates is about billion years old and has had life for about billion of those years humans have only been around for at most about years but the fossil evidence inidcates that life has been changing and evolving and in fact disease ridden long before there were people yes there are fossils that show signs of disease mostly bone disorders of course but there are some heck not just fossil evidence but what we ve been able to glean from genetic study shows that disease has been around for a long long time if human sin was what brought about disease at least indirectly though necessarily then how could it exist before humans god created the original genetic code perfect and without flaw and without getting sidetracked into the theological ramifications of the original sin the main effect of the so called original sin for this discussion was to remove humanity from god s protection since by their choice a e cut themselves off from intimate fellowship with god in addition their sin caused them to come under the dominion of satan who then assumed dominion over the earth deletions since humanity was no longer under god s protection but under satan s dominion it was no great feat for satan to genetically engineer diseases both bacterial viral and genetic although the forces of natural selection tend to improve the survivability of species the degeneration of the genetic code tends to more than offset this uh i know of many evolutionary biologists who know more about biology than you claim to who will strongly disagree with this there is no evidence that the human genetic code or any other started off in perfect condition it seems to adapt to its envionment in a collective sense i m really curious as to what you mean by the degeneration of the genetic code human dna being more complex tends to accumulate errors adversely affecting our well being and ability to fight off disease while the simpler dna of bacteria and viruses tend to become more efficient in causing infection and disease it is a bad combination umm nah we seem to do a pretty good job of adapting to viruses and bacteria and they to us only a very small percentage of microlife is harmful to humans and that small percentage seems to be reasonalby constant in size but the ranks keep changing for example bubonic plague used to be a really nasty disease i m sure you ll agree but it still pops up from time to time even today and doesn t do as much damage part of that is because of better sanitation but even when people get the disease the symptoms tend to be less severe than in the past this seems to be partly because people who were very susceptible died off long ago and because the really nasty variants overgrazed forgive the poor terminology i m an engineer not a doctor and died off for lack of nearby hosts i could be wrong on this but from what i gather acne is only a few hundred years old and used to be nastier though no killer it seems to be getting less nasty w age hence we have newborns that suffer from genetic viral and bacterial diseases disorders now wait a minute i have a question humans were created perfect right and you admit that we have an inbuilt abiliy to fight off disease it seems unlikely that satan who s making the diseases would also gift humans with the means to fight them off simpler to make the diseases less lethal if he wants survivors as far as i can see our immune systems imperfect though they may presently be must have been built into us by god i want to be clear on this are you saying that god was planning ahead for the time when satan would be in charge by building an immune system that was not at the time of design necessary that is god made our immune systems ahead of time knowing that adam and eve would sin and their descendents would need to fight off diseases this may be more of a mystical supernatural explanation than you are prepared to accept but god is not responsible for disease even if satan had nothing to do with the original inception of disease evolution by random chance would have produced them since humanity forsook god s protection here s another puzzle what exactly do you mean by perfect in the phrase created perfect and without flaw to my mind a perfect system would be incapable of degrading over time a perfect system that will without constant intervention become imperfect is not a perfect system at least imho or is it that god did something like writing a masterpiece novel on a bunch of gum wrappers held together with elmer s glue that is the original genetic instructions were perfect but were written in inferior materials that had to be carefully tended or would fall apart if so why could god not have used better materials was god incapable of creating a system that could maintain itself of did it just choose not to deletions in summary newborns are innocent but god does not cause their suffering my main point as i said was that there really isn t any evidence for the explanation you give at least that i m aware of but i couldn t help making a few nitpicks here and there sincerely ray ingles the above opinions are probably not those of the university of ingles engin umich edu michigan yet

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re concerning god s morality long in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes in article apr leland stanford edu galahad leland stanford edu scott compton writes deletions now back to your post you have done a fine job at using your seventh grade life science course to explain why bad diseases are caused by satan and good things are a result of god but i want to let you in on a little secret we can create an amino acid sequence in lab and guess what the sequence curls into a helix wow that s right it can happen without a supernatural force wow all it takes is a few advanced science degrees and millions of dollars of state of the art equipment and i thought it took intelligence to create the building blocks of life foolish me people with advanced science degrees use state of the art equipment and spend millions of dollars to simulate tornadoes but tornadoes do not require intelligence to exist not only that the equipment needed is not really state of the art to study the products yes but not to generate them if you want to be sure that i read your post and to provide a response send a copy to jim brown oz bmd trw com i can t read a a every day and some posts slip by thanks oh i will sincerely ray ingles the above opinions are probably not those of the university of ingles engin umich edu michigan yet

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re an anecdote about islam date apr gmt from jon livesey livesey solntze wpd sgi com in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes i don t understand the point of this petty sarcasm it is a basic principle of islam that if one is born muslim or one says i testify that there is no god but god and mohammad is a prophet of god that so long as one does not explicitly reject islam by word then one must be considered muslim by all muslims so the phenomenon you re attempting to make into a general rule or psychology is a direct odds with basic islamic principles if you want to attack islam you could do better than than to argue against something that islam explicitly contradicts then mr mozumder is incorrect when he says that when committing bad acts people temporarily become atheists jon of course b m is not incorrect he is defending islam when defending islam against infidels you can say anything and no one will dare criticize you but when an atheist uses the same argument he is using petty sarcasm so b m can have his temporary atheists whenever he needs them and all the temporary atheists can later say that they were always good muslims because they never explicitly rejected islam temporary atheism temporary islam temporary marriage none of it sticks a teflon religion how convenient and so easy to clean up after but then what would you expect from a bunch of people who can t even agree on the phases of the moon

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re concerning god s morality long this kind of argument cries for a comment jbrown batman bmd trw com wrote in article apr leland stanford edu galahad leland stanford edu scott compton writes jim you originally wrote god did not create disease nor is he responsible for the maladies of newborns what god did create was life according to a protein code which is mutable and can evolve without delving into a deep discussion of creationism vs evolutionism god created the original genetic code perfect and without flaw do you have any evidence for this if the code was once perfect and has degraded ever since we should have some evidence in favour of this statement shouldn t we perhaps the biggest imperfection of the code is that it is full of non coding regions introns which are so called because they intervene with the coding regions exons an impressive amount of evidence suggests that introns are of very ancient origin it is likely that early exons represented early protein domains is the number of introns decreasing or increasing it appears that intron loss can occur and species with common ancestry usually have quite similar exon intron structure in their genes on the other hand the possibility that introns have been inserted later presents several logical difficulties introns are removed by a splicing mechanism this would have to be present but unused if introns are inserted moreover intron insertion would have required precise targeting random insertion would not be tolerated since sequences for intron removal self splicing of mrna are conserved besides transposition of a sequence usually leaves a trace long terminal repeats and target site duplications and these are not found in or near intron sequences i seriously recommend reading textbooks on molecular biology and genetics before posting theological arguments like this try watson s molecular biology of the gene or darnell lodish baltimore s molecular biology of the cell for starters remember the question was posed in a theological context why does god cause disease in newborns and my answer is likewise from a theological perspective my own it is no less valid than a purely scientific perspective just different scientific perspective is supported by the evidence whereas theological perspectives often fail to fulfil this criterion i think you misread my meaning i said god made the genetic code perfect but that doesn t mean it s perfect now it has certainly evolved since for the worse would you please cite a few references that support your assertion your assertion is less valid than the scientific perspective unless you support it by some evidence in fact it has been claimed that parasites and diseases are perhaps more important than we ve thought for instance sex might have evolved as defence against parasites this view is supported by computer simulations of evolution eg tierra perhaps i thought it was higher energy rays like x rays gamma rays and cosmic rays that caused most of the damage in fact it is thermal energy that does most of the damage although it is usually mild and easily fixed by enzymatic action actually neither of us knows what the atmosphere was like at the time when god created life according to my recollection most biologists do not claim that life began billion years ago after all that would only be a half billion years or so after the earth was created it would still be too primitive to support life i seem to remember a figure more like to billion years ago for the origination of life on earth anyone with a better estimate i d replace created with formed since there is no need to invoke any creator if the earth can be formed without one most recent estimates of the age of the earth range between billion years and earliest signs of life not true fossils but organic stromatolite like layers date back to billion years this would leave more than billion years for the first cells to evolve i m sorry i can t give any references this is based on the course on evolutionary biochemistry i attended here dominion it was no great feat for satan to genetically engineer diseases both bacterial viral and genetic although the forces of natural selection tend to improve the survivability of species the degeneration of the genetic code tends to more than offset this again do you want this be true or do you have any evidence for this supposed degeneration i can understand scott s reaction excuse me but this is so far fetched that i know you must be jesting do you know what pathogens are do you know what point mutations are do you know that everything can come about spontaneously in response to your last statement no and neither do you you may very well believe that and accept it as fact but you cannot know that i hope you don t forget this we have evidence that suggests everything can come about spontaneously do you have evidence against this conclusion in science one does not have to believe in anything it is a healthy sign to doubt and disbelieve but the right path to walk is to take a look at the evidence if you do so and not to present one s own conclusions prior to this theology does not use this method therefore i seriously doubt it could ever come to right conclusions human dna being more complex tends to accumulate errors adversely affecting our well being and ability to fight off disease while the simpler dna of bacteria and viruses tend to become more efficient in causing infection and disease it is a bad combination hence we have newborns that suffer from genetic viral and bacterial diseases disorders you are supposing a purpose not a valid move bacteria and viruses do not exist to cause disease they are just another manifests of a general principle of evolution only replication saves replicators from degradiation we are just an efficient method for our dna to survive and replicate the less efficient methods didn t make it to the present and for the last time please present some evidence for your claim that human dna is degrading through evolutionary processes some people have claimed that the opposite is true we have suppressed our selection and thus are bound to degrade i haven t seen much evidence for either claim but then i ask so where is this relevant to my discussion in answering john s question of why why are there genetic diseases and why are there so many bacterial and viral diseases which require babies to develop antibodies is it god s fault the original question i say no it is not of course nothing evil is god s fault but your explanation does not work it fails miserably you may be right but the fact is that you don t know that satan is not responsible and neither do i suppose that a powerful evil being like satan exists would it be inconceivable that he might be responsible for many of the ills that affect mankind i don t think so he could have done a much better job pun intended the problem is it seems no satan is necessary to explain any diseases they are just as inevitable as any product of evolution did i say that where seems to me like another bad inference actually what you ve done is to oversimplify what i said to the point that your summary of my words takes on a new context i never said that people are meant presumably by god to be punished by getting diseases why i did say is that free moral choices have attendent consequences if mankind chooses to reject god as people have done since the beginning then they should not expect god to protect them from adverse events in an entropic universe i am not expecting this if god exists i expect him to leave us alone i would also like to hear why do you believe your choices are indeed free this is an interesting philosophical question and the answer is not as clear cut as it seems to be what consequences would you expect from rejecting allah oh i admit it s not perfect yet but i m working on it a good library or a bookstore is a good starting point what does this have to do with the price of tea in china or the question to which i provided an answer biology and genetics are fine subjects and important scientific endeavors but they explain how god created and set up life processes they don t explain the why behind creation life or its subsequent evolution why is there a why behind and your proposition was something that is not supported by the evidence this is why we recommend these books is there any need to invoke any why behind a prime mover evidence for this if the whole universe can come into existence without any intervention as recent cosmological theories hawking et al suggest why do people still insist on this thanks scotty for your fine and sagely advice but i am not highly motivated to learn all the nitty gritty details of biology and genetics although i m sure i d find it a fascinating subject for i realize that the details do not change the big picture that god created life in the beginning with the ability to change and adapt to its environment i m sorry but they do there is no evidence for your big picture and no need to create anything that is capable of adaptation it can come into existence without a supreme being try reading p w atkins creation revisited freeman petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game

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re islam dress code for women in article ba c i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes do women have souls in islam people have said here that some muslims say that women do not have souls i must admit i have never heard of such a view being held by muslims of any era i have heard of some christians of some eras holding this viewpoint but not muslims are you sure you might not be confusing christian history with islamic history yes it is supposed to have been a predominant view in the turkish caliphate i am not aware of any turkish caliphate viewpoint on this can you reference however i found a quote due to imam ali whom the shias follow men never obey your women in any way whatsoever never let them give their advice on any matter whatsoever even those of everyday life indeed allow them freely to give advice on anything and they will fritter away one s wealth and disobey the wishes of the owner of this wealth we see them without religion when alone they are left to their own devices they are lacking in both pity and virtue when their carnal desires are at stake it is easy to enjoy them but they cause great anxiety the most virtious among them are libertines but the most corrupt are whores only those of them whom age has deprived of any charm are untainted by vice they have three qualities particular to miscreants they complain of being oppressed whereas it is they who oppress they make oaths whereas they are lying they pretend to refuse men s solicitations whereas they desire them most ardently let us beg the help of god to emerge victorious from their evil deeds and preserve us in any case from their good ones quote from mas ud al qanawi ref a bouhdiba sexuality in islam p i wouldn t consider this quote as being exemplary of the islamic tm viewpoint though for all we know the prophet s cousin and the fourth khalif hazret i ali may have said this after a frustrating night with a woman selim guncer selim e guncer jaca negra luna grande csser asu y aceitunas en mi alforja aunque sepa los caminos guncer enuxha eas asu edu yo nunca llegare a cordoba fgl

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re islamic authority over women in article apr ultb isc rit edu snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes that s your mistake it would be better for the children if the mother raised the child one thing that relates is among navy men that get tatoos that say mom because of the love of their mom it makes for more virile men compare that with how homos are raised do a study and you will get my point but in no way do you have a claim that it would be better if the men stayed home and raised the child that is something false made up by feminists that seek a status above men you do not recognize the fact that men and women have natural differences not just physically but mentally also bobby there s a question here that i just have to ask if all of your posts aren t some sort of extended elaborate hoax why are you trying so hard to convince the entire civilised world that you re feeble minded you have a talent for saying the most absurd things here s a little sign for you print it cut it out and put it on top of your computer terminal engage brain prior to operating keyboard having said all that i must admit we all get a laugh from your stuff graham jenkins graham jenkins its csiro au csiro commonwealth scientific industrial canberra australia research organisation

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re jews can t hide from keith cco in article c daq fqs austin ibm com karner austin ibm com f karner writes so you consider the german poster s remark anti semitic when someone says so after years of sightseeing and roaming around its ok to come back kill palastinians and get their land back right yes that s casual antisemitism i can think of plenty of ways to criticize israeli policy without insulting jews or jewish history can t you jon

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re don t more innocents die without the death penalty james f tims p psilink com writes by maintaining classes d and e even in prison it seems as if we place more innocent people at a higher risk of an unjust death than we would if the state executed classes d and e with an occasional error i would rather be at a higher risk of being killed than actually killed by mistake though i do agree with the concept that the type d and e murderers are a massive waste of space and resources i don t agree with the concept killing is wrong if you kill we will punish you our punishment will be to kill you seems to be lacking in consistency i know is nothing more than i believe with pretentions

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re islam dress code for women in article apr ennews eas asu edu guncer enuxha eas asu edu selim guncer writes i wouldn t consider this quote as being exemplary of the islamic tm viewpoint though for all we know the prophet s cousin and the fourth khalif hazret i ali may have said this after a frustrating night with a woman that s very interesting i wonder are women s reactions recorded after a frustrating night with a man is that considered to be important jon

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re there must be a creator maybe in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes in article apr bradford ac uk l newnham bradford ac uk leonard newnham writes deletions argument from incredulity has not been considered a valid form of reasoning since medieval times deletions interesting that you should mention that argument from incredulity has not been considered a valid form of reasoning since medieval times i quite agree why then do some atheists here engage in it more than a few times i have read posts where the atheists posting state that they cannot see how a gracious and loving god can allow such evil and suffering to occur as we see on the earth simply because they cannot envision it it must not be true if this is not an argument from incredulity i don t know what is as you have presented it it is indeed an argument from incredulity however from what i have seen it is not often presented in this manner it is usually presented more in the form and besides i cannot see nor have i ever been offered a convincing explanation moreover it is not unreasonable to ask for an explanation for such phenomena that theism does not provide a convincing explanation is not an argument in theism s favor especially when different theisms offer different explanations and even different adherents of what is purportedly the same theism give different explanations god has far more complex motivations and reasons for action or non action than to simply fix evil whenever and however it occurs or even before it occurs and yet it is this very same argument from incredulity which ranks high among reasons why atheists in general reject god and in particular the christian god not im my experience in my experience the most common reason is the lack of evidence in theism s favor you mileage may vary this seems to be the universal bane of human reasoning and rationality to wit that it is far easier to see the logical fallacy or inept reasoning on the part of one s opponents than it is to see it in oneself oh heck i ll be snide this once it s also fairly easy to attack arguments that are not made i e strawmen as one man of wisdom put it take the log out of your own eye before you try to remove the splinter from your neighbor s eye sage advice indeed sincerely raymond ingles ingles engin umich edu an apple every eight hours keeps three doctors away b kliban

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re political atheists keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes mathew mathew mantis co uk writes perhaps we shouldn t imprision people if we could watch them closely instead the cost would probably be similar especially if we just implanted some sort of electronic device why wait until they commit the crime why not implant such devices in potential criminals like communists and atheists sorry i don t follow your reasoning you are proposing to punish people before they commit a crime what justification do you have for this no mathew is proposing a public defence mechanism not treating the electronic device as an impropriety on the wearer what he is saying is that the next step beyond what you propose is the permanent bugging of potential criminals this may not on the surface sound like a bad thing but who defines what a potential criminal is if the government of the day decides that being a member of an opposition party makes you a potential criminal then openly defying the government becomes a lethal practice this is not conducive to a free society mathew is saying that implanting electronic surveillance devices upon people is an impropriety upon that person regardless of what type of crime or what chance of recidivism there is basically you see the criminal justice system as a punishment for the offender and possibly therefore a deterrant to future offenders mathew sees it most probably as a means of rehabilitation for the offender so he was being cynical at you okay jeff

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re a little too satanic in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes nanci ann miller writes the corrupted over and over theory is pretty weak comparison of the current hebrew text with old versions and translations shows that the text has in fact changed very little over a space of some two millennia this shouldn t be all that suprising people who believe in a text in this manner are likely to makes some pains to make good copies tell it to king james mate c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god john burke jdb summa tamu edu

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re islamic marriage date tue apr gmt from f karner karner austin ibm com in article apr cadence com mas cadence com masud khan writes in article c qav wg austin ibm com karner austin ibm com f karner writes okay so you want me to name names there are obviously no official records of these pseudo marriages because they are performed for convenience what happens typically is that the woman is willing to move in with her lover without any scruples or legal contracts to speak of the man is merely utilizing a loophole by entering into a temporary religious marriage contract in order to have sex nobody complains nobody cares nobody needs to know perhaps you should alert your imam it could be that this practice is far more widespread than you may think or maybe it takes muslim men to witness the penetration to decide if the practice exists again you astound me with the level of ignorance you display muslims are not allowed to enter temporary marriages got that there is no evidence for it it an outlawed practise so get your facts straight buddy give me references for it or just tell everyone you were lying it is not a widespread as you may think fantasise in fact contrary to your fantasies it is not practised at all amongst muslims did you miss my post on this topic with the quote from the indonesian handbook and fred rice s comments about temporary marriages if so i will be glad to repost them will you accept that it just may be a practice among some muslims if i do or will you continue to claim that we are all lying and that it is not practised at all amongst muslims i don t think f karner has to tell everyone anything least of all that he is lying since you obviously know nothing about this practice there is very little you can contribute to the discussion except to accuse everyone of lying perhaps it is your ignorance which is showing learn more about islam learn more about muslims open your eyes maybe you will also see some of the things the atheists see

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re don t more innocents die without the death penalty in article chrisb baarnie chrisb tafe sa edu au chris bell writes killing is wrong if you kill we will punish you our punishment will be to kill you seems to be lacking in consistency not any more so than holding people against their will is wrong if you hold people against their will we will punish you our punishment will be to hold you against your will is there any punishment which isn t something which if done by a private person to another private person for no apparent reason would lead to punishment fines i suppose jim lippard lippard ccit arizona edu dept of philosophy lippard arizvms bitnet university of arizona tucson az

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re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses in article kmr po cwru edu kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes in article suopanki apr stekt oulu fi suopanki stekt oulu fi heikki t suopanki writes god is eternal a b jesus is god c a therefore jesus is eternal c b this works both logically and mathematically god is of the set of things which are eternal jesus is a subset of god therefore jesus belongs to the set of things which are eternal the first premise and the conclusion are not properly translated as identity statements since the is in those statements is the is of predication rather than of identity instead they should be translated using a predicate letter using g to designate god and j to designate jesus and the predicate letter e for the property of being eternal the first premise is eg and the conclusion is ej the second premise appears to contain an is of identity in which case it can be properly symbolized as j g but your remark that jesus is a subset of god suggests that strict identity is not desired here if however the first premise means that all members making up the set god have the property of being eternal the same conclusion follows jim lippard lippard ccit arizona edu dept of philosophy lippard arizvms bitnet university of arizona tucson az

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re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses in article chrisb baarnie chrisb tafe sa edu au chris bell writes jbrown batman bmd trw com writes my syllogism is of the form a is b c is a therefore c is b this is a logically valid construction your syllogism however is of the form a is b c is b therefore c is a therefore yours is a logically invalid construction and your comments don t apply if all of those are is s of identity both syllogisms are valid if however b is a predicate then the second syllogism is invalid the first syllogism as you have pointed out is valid whether b is a predicate or designates an individual jim lippard lippard ccit arizona edu dept of philosophy lippard arizvms bitnet university of arizona tucson az