So having beliefs makes you a Nazi....dully noted. I'll spread the word

"I will not enter in to a debate on my faith. I need not defend what I hold in my heart to be true."

I wish to grant you the respect of your beliefs without trampling them. So I will.

But as a reminder, your above statement could have just as easily come from a devoted Hitler follower, A Jim Jones Follower, Or a Pol Pot follower.

Belief is not "truth", and claiming it for yourself is fine but it puts you in the company of people you have no intention of ever being in the company of, by your nature or your intellect.

Its interesting how one person can see one thing in an article or post and another may see something completely different. "What can we see but what we are?"-- Emmerson

"If I truly believe in something that I feel is beautiful and joyous and I have this feeling deep in my core (love) When I pass this belief of faith and feeling of love on to my children it is not a lie but simply love"

To me Janes statement was simply saying she expresses the love and joy within her own soul to her children.

Maybe I am simple minded, but I don't understand how her statement denotes that shes not
teaching her "children that love is a wonderful thing, and that it is inside every human being?"

or how

"It seems to me you are teaching them to hold a belief that clashes both with reality and most other people's "god" beliefs."

Jane, what I saw in your post is that you are a wonderful mother that uplifts your children through sharing your feelings of joy. Keep spreading the love.

"If I truly believe in something that I feel is beautiful and joyous and I have this feeling deep in my core (love) When I pass this belief of faith and feeling of love on to my children it is not a lie but simply love."

That sounds all wonderful and very motherly and full of love, but the problem is if you tell your children that it is OK to believe in things that are not true simply because you "feel" them and call them "love", are you really being loving to the child?

Why not teach your children that love is a wonderful thing, and that it is inside every human being?

Why teach them that they cannot possess love without a belief in something outside of themselves?

Seems to me you are teaching them that without a belief in something unknowable and undefinable, they are incapable of having legitimate feelings of "love" and "peace" and a sense of well being and purpose.

It seems to me you are teaching them to hold a belief that clashes both with reality and most other people's "god" beliefs.

Rather than getting them closer to loving all of humanity and the natural world, you are pushing them into a dusty old corner just because you feel "love" and comfort there.

I would think that teaching them about how unique they are just being on the playing field in this grand old universe of ours, complete with its history and complex structure, its physical laws and its expanses of space, would fill them far beyond the brim with both awe and wonder and a sense of the "love" you are referring to.

UMMMMMMMM............

"If the Christians were not so embarrassed of the faith in Christ they claim to have, perhaps we'd not have seen the atheist and Canadian hijackings, and would have a better balance of voices in these fora -- one that reflects the makeup of this commonwealth -- and might hope to restore discussion addressing the critical political issues of our day..."

UMMMMMMMM............ Why is it that when reasonable people present a reasonable argument against a set of unreasonable beliefs, it is considered a "hijacking"? But when unreasonable people with unreasonale ideas coagulate together and form voting blocks that actually elect the worst president in modern memory, it is considered "politics".

Christians brought on the blowback themselves. They gathered in number, elevated themelves in importance, and are now active participants in the political morass we find ourselves in.

When delusion and superstition and an adherance to both is a prerequisite for the job of president, it is time to take a stand against it. It is no longer a harmless exercise by gullible people afraid of the dark. It has become an active force based on a willingness to surrender willingly to an invisible man with awesome powers (who only manages to demonstrate these powers through stains on windows and cheese toast...) There is no "liberty" in kowtowing to ancient superstitous beliefs. There is no "freedom" in shackling the mind with a boatload of untrue fairy tales. There is no "personal reponsibility" in handing over all of your missteps and bad behaving to a pair of timbers hung on a wall with the homo-masochistic effigy of a mostly naked tortured man nailed to it.

Enough is enough. We are not a nation "under god". We are a nation under a cloud of delusion, with parents lying to their children, with religious nuts like Graham and Falwell and Haggart (yes, I know, but the new charlatans' names are not known to me) walking in and out of the White House. We are a nation who has just put another probe on mars, while a sucker-majority of our people kneel so that the soul that they do not have can go to a place that does not exist, based on the words in a book that are demonstrably not even close to being true.

Snakes do not talk, humans do not rise from the dead, water does not turn into wine (it would be cool if it did, but would it ever be as good as a Sonoma County Pinot Noir?) god does not answer prayers, this is the only life you get, and you all have evolved from a lineage that includes other apes...

Now grow up and stop lying to your children.

I decided today to start collecting some of my deepest religious questions. Here are a few--

Why does god sometime heal cancer and sometime not, but never heals amputations no matter how hard one prays? Why does god only heal things which have a track record of healing themselves, and at exactly the same rate statistically whether one prays or not?

Why would god create homosexuals? So the villagers could practice their stoning before they had to deal with those who worked on the sabbath?

Why didn't god tell the snake to piss off BEFORE he ratted out the tree?
(Is crawling on your belly REALLY a punishment for a snake? How else could a snake move about? Fly? Walk?)

Why don't those who ascend bodily to heaven explode in space?

Why do Christians pick out the bad bits of the bible and only use the bits that agree with a modern morality? Why are the bad bits no longer Christian or biblical? Shouldn't we be stoning all the Sabbath working people? Why aren't we? Why do we allow women who are menstruating into our holy places? Why aren't we killing our unruly teenagers?

What does "under god" actually mean? I mean actually? Under which god? Is there a person alive who "knows" the answer to this? Or are we supposed to just assume someone actually knows, and leave it at that? Why would god be "over" us? What if we were visiting Sydney? Would he then be "under us", making us "over god"? Should Australia write on their money, "one nation, over god"?

If the mind cannot exist without the brain, how does this whole afterlife thing work? Why would I care about eternity if my mind couldn't come with me? What good does my energy do me in heaven if I can't enjoy it the way I enjoy beer and boobies? If I am struck in the head and rendered retarded, do I go to heaven as a retard? If I was born a retard and I had perverse sexual relations with a minister, do they count that on my score sheet? Why do Christians practice similated Vampirism and Cannabalism?

Why is the image of a mostly naked man, tortured and nailed to a large plank not considered a homo-erotic statue?

Were the Dinasaurs one of god's unfortunate errors? Or was he just trying shit out?

If god is an intelligent designer, why does he sometimes put tiny legs on whales? What's so intelligent about that? Is he just messing with our heads?

Does god watch tv?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlnmuKk_1o

I can't wait... Religion-- comedy at its finest...

"is most assuredly a lie. No respectable biologist, physicist, or cosmologist has made -- or will make -- that assertion. In fact it sounds like something from...an Outhouse."

You just can't get enough abuse can you?

Humans evolved from a lineage that includes modern apes.

We weren't "placed here" like Barbie and Ken into a garden where a talking snake said something he shouldn't have...

Now if you want to take it back to the beginning of life "forms", sure, no respectable person can say where the original "spark" came from.

No religious person can even get close to the first assertion, though, so we science people are still winning by a mile...

where/how the Indians would fit into this discussion? After all they were here first..

""""When someone asserts that God doesn't exist, nothing is illuminated: there is no research, no theory, no test, no anything but a bald assertion. The only explanation it provides is, "God didn't do it.""""

Yes. That is correct. What that does is open up inquiry into the actual "truth" of the matter.

When one makes the opposite assertion, that "god did it", it answers nothing as well, and stops the natural inclination towards inquiry that may actually produce "the truth".

We now know the approximate age of the universe and many of the structural elements of unseen matter because of this. What has the burning bush shown you?

""""1) The term 'founding' presumes planting, seminal shaping. The documents laying out the norms and nobility demanded of the average American colonist were filling the extant record of early America for well over a century prior to the writings of the Enlightenment Deists."""

So now you are backed into stating that since Europeans who colonized America were predominantly Christian, that the country is based on the Christian "ethos" and not an amalgamation of various influences?

First you make the claim that we have been successful for two hundred years (I read that as since the drawing up of the documents we base our society on) and then, when evidence is produced to refute that assertion, you crawl back a hundred years and make a new claim.

It really must be difficult trying to maintain a sane outlook when everything you hold to be true is so easily refutable.

You're like Clinton with his infamous "define IS"...

At some point it becomes clear just what IS actually is...

could keep a thread like this going for so long. :)

Tom Mullen

www.tommullen.net
www.myspace.com/skepticsongs