Ah, if only I money, a credit card, a job, and future not brightened by years of dauting student loans, I might sponsor this. This deserves to be on the up and coming, at least.
"The irony of every 'religious' site I've made so far is that I am proved
RIGHT 100% of the time by the hatred, evil, and ruthlessness of my
commentors."
I hope you don't think I'm proving you right when i say that's one of the more idiotic argument I've seen in my life.
-> rally fervor, dehumanize outsiders, and thus motivate a population towards genocide. Religious authorities (something on the scale of a pope) can provide a voice of dissent against a dictatorship, but I don't think that means you can say atheism is responsible for more deaths that any other religion, or that being religious prevents deaths or dictatorships. Fundamental beleifs about human rights and liberties do that, and that doesn;t require religion. For shame, Whetstone....
Mildly funny, but deploarably irrelevent and misleading. There are so many factors to consider in these genocidal murders, i.e., form of government (dictatorships which force a belief system on people), and populations under control of said govenments (U.S.S.R.). I'm also extreemly suspicious about how you choose to categorize governments, i.e. are the nazi's, which didn't declare themselves to be atheistic, placed in your "atheiest" column? Simply, religion provides an easy, irrational means for ->
I five considered non-dogmatic philosophy ytmnds. You have an exceelent point in saying that discussions of god are merely discussion, and unimportant, perhaps even detrimental to social and political cooperation. Not quite prepared to call them useless, and I do think that if we do these theological debates right, they're a good thing.
-> stongly to these. Same goes for the argument for belief in god from maintainence of morality (it seems to be that such socially encouraged, non-emphirical beleifs can go both in favor of moral compassion and against it. Certainly in the governmental realm, they've gone very vividly towards the latter on numerous occasions).
While I'm on a role: "atheists are morally superior because they're not motivated merely by a fear of god to be moral" ---> If we don't get these moral beleifs an d compulsions, as atheists, from a fear of god, where do we get them. Obviously, for them to be so compelling and universal, and for newly born atheists from a religion to not go on a worry free given spree when given the chance to not be caught, there must be something about humanity other than mere considered beleif for us to hold so ->
And another thing. About this rebutting or not rebutting whetstone. Fundamentally, now that almost everyone into the controvery knows that you can't PROVE or DISPROVE the existance of god by now, a sentimental reference would be the most effective means of trying to advocate a viewpoint. After all, the mass of people beleive things regardless of their "provability", and make judgements from sentimentally influenced inductive leaps (including some aesthetic, moral, and most political beleifs).
-> other. If we don't, we'll be end up with both a large amount of animosity, and the death of a very interesting and meaningful, and unusually universally reaching discourse.
It didn't take atheism to build the voyager (certainly, though, a willingness to question long standing religious beleifs, ala copernicus). To me, an admitted atheist, this is a wonderful ytmnd. But it's existance and popularity, along with that of similar counters to whetstone, may effectively signal the theological-philosophical cat being let out of the bag. This could all ed as a positive, provided that tempers don't run too high, and we try our best to find ways to talk to, rather than around each->
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