RRC Archives

ElectricDisciple, You are about as bright as a LED headlamp on very, very old batteries. There is light there, but next to a normal light, you look pretty dim.

Check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Deceptions-Myths- ... 0806511249 might help you find your way

ElectricDisciple wrote:People suffocate because God sneezed? Pru, that is a very stupid comment... Quit blowing smoke...

sure it sounds stupid, but it jives perfectly with what you posted.

ED:

The hypo about god keeping me breathing is utter nonsense. Why am I peeing around in the 5.11's when half the people on this board are cranking way harder. Does god help them up the wall??? If god is allowing them to breath he is certainly helping them climb! That is not fair. I guess I am a child of a lesser god.

I think you are pulling on our legs anyway. Very few weebles are dumb enough to believe that hypo. Talk about plurality; now we are all on celestial respirators!

Shamis wrote:

ynot wrote:WTH? Shamis, you have solid proof we have no soul?

Cognitive scientists are close to explaining many aspects of the brain which are typically associated with a soul.

Of course the soul is already a plurality. AGAIN Shamis does not have to prove we have no soul. The person claiming the soul needs to gather evidence for its existence, needs to demonstrate that the soul is a better explanation than other explanations. There is no way anyone can prove that something is not.

Re-read Dr. Seuss' "Horton hears a who" and stop talking to whos who are not! This will likely get me in trouble. I will not respond to the obvious so don't remind me about how that story ended!

Corporate Whore (yep, that's me) wrote:if one thing good comes from any of this, hopefully you all understand your own beliefs more as a result. other than that, i encourage you to use the energy more effectively. a few good places to start:

http://lnt.org/
http://www.conservation.org/
http://www.mountainfund.org/main.html
http://www.habitat.org/
http://national.unitedway.org/
among thousands of others..

there's a lot to do.. get to work!

forgot a good one:
http://unicef.org/

ElectricDisciple wrote:You know, the great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1800s) believed that all the dust particles that could be seen in the sunlight of the window moved only by God's power, through his control, and as He wished. I'll throw this proverbial bee in your bonnet. God controls all the molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles in the same way. The very act of you breathing right now is because of God's divine sovereignty and by his good pleasure. If He were to withdraw His power, you would collapse and die of suffocation.

How's that ?

But, dude, like, uh you know, like, what if we don't, like, exist. Ya know - like what if we're just some other dude's dream, but, like, cuz we're in the dream, we don't know that it's a dream. Ya know?!?!

If by 'great preacher' you mean someone who can come up with ideological constructs that prop up a belief system, then, yes, this bit of pointlessly circular reasoning is brilliant.

Can you document instances where God has changed the rules of physics? Is it repeatable?

No, I didn't think so. So you are looking at a consistent world through empirical observation. (Dust particles exist, they float in air currents, sunlight interacts with them in a particular way, etc.) You are creating an untestable mental construct (God makes this happen) that you overlay on what you observe. Whoopdee do. Where's the 'bee in the bonnet'?

Listen, a major construct of the worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that the decline in the numbers of pirates around the world correlates with global warming. There are fewer and fewer pirates and the average global atmospheric is increasing at the same time. Clearly, the decline in pirates is causing global warming. How's that for a bee in your bonnet.

Obviously, there is no causal connection. But as we've been discussing, there is no way to disprove the idea that the decline in pirates causes global warming. There is no way to disprove that we are all part of some dream. In the same way there is no way to disprove the idea that God is actively suspending the motes of dust in the air.

So, you present this shallow, but poetic idea. So what?

OK - so why do people care about this 'creation museum' or ED's blind obedience? Why do these things rile people up?

I just drew the connection. On my TV is a documentary about a 16 year old girl in Iran who was executed for 'immorality' by the Morality Police and Religious Court. Her immorality? She was being raped by a guy in his 50s. Under religious law, she's the slut, not that he's the abuser. That's religion and government working together. That's ED's pathetic logic in real-world application.

America is moving away from it's mostly secular, Constitutional ideals and moving towards a religiously based government. Wether it's a president who claims to speak for God or the movement to put religious judges in the courts or legislators passing obviously unconstitutional laws to promote religious issues, we're several steps away from Iran or the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials, but we're moving in that direction. To the degree that many (most?) Americans believe that our 'global war on terror' is essentially a Christian army striking out against the Muslim world, we are very close to those nightmares.

I, for one, believe in America, and crap like the 'creation museum' may just be a pimple, but it's a symptom of the deeper disease.

tomdarch wrote:Why do these things rile people up?

Because when we hear someone say something as stupid as god keeping the dust particles in the air, we shake our heads and wonder how anyone could think this.

I think that all the problems can pretty much be summed up in this song eclipse by the beta band, I could only find the whole album but make sure to listen to Eclipse, song #10, song 11 is great too if you have the time but not so relevant
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/a ... 61,00.html

hey paul, if there are no souls and it's all dust to dust, why even bother with these organizations you mention? what's the point of helping a neighbor with a hand up?

anyone?