Don't waste it on superstitious nonsense like god.
-
Blade_TillTheEnd — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 12:51 PM)
It's not a lie. You're just stupid. You're immune to facts and logic so I don't have any hope of ever convincing you. This thread isn't for you since you don't have a life to waste.
I said a convincing argument not a temper tantrum.
I have no interest in refraining from my dishonesty and stupidity.
-Cash -
YouMightRabbitYouMight — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 07:40 AM)
The gross immorality of the core message is a biggee.
I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force. -
washclothrepairman — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 04:10 PM)
And if God isn't nonsense
I don't waste my time with fictional what-ifs.
There's no such thing as god and pretending there is is wasting the only life you will ever have.
Further, a hypothetical god-like entity that cares whether you believe in it (and even more so will punish you for not doing so) is unworthy of your time.
Never trust a black man named "Chip." -
quyst — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 10:48 PM)
WCR,
But you do waste your time with fictional what-ifs. You waste your time on the fictional what-if of "There's no such things as god" because you state something as a fact that you have not and cannot prove. It is, then, a what-if.
And whether you believe it or not, believing in God and knowing that God is, is not, can not and will never be wasting the only life I have. The best of who I am stems from believing and knowing that He is.
Finally, God does not punish us for not believing in Him. We punish ourselves by being disobedient (even to the point of professing disbelief). When you tell God that you don't believe in Him and want nothing to do with Him, He obliges. But there is an accounting for how we conduct our lives. And EVERYONE falls short. Therefore, God provided the way of reconciliation, through His Son. The same grace that God provided for me, He provides for you. It's really just a matter of accepting His gift. That you choose to reject it does not lay blame at God's feet. The blame falls squarely with you, because YOU reject a free gift that required a great payment. God is in the business of saving people from the punishment they bring upon themselves. But as you continue to bring accusations against Him that are, truly, your own doing, you only heap greater coals of destruction upon yourself. You can choose to continue (and your demeanor indicates that is how you seek to proceed) or you can have your eyes opened and your heart filled and walk a different path.
And His desire for me to believe in Him is so I can have full confidence in His promise of grace. It is for my benefit, my peace of mind, my strength of heart to believe. For in it, I know that He has the authority to make the promise and keep the promise. -
gladoscake — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 07:52 AM)
WCR,
But you do waste your time with fictional what-ifs. You waste your time on the fictional what-if of "There's no such things as god" because you state something as a fact that you have not and cannot prove. It is, then, a what-if.
And whether you believe it or not, believing in God and knowing that God is, is not, can not and will never be wasting the only life I have. The best of who I am stems from believing and knowing that He is.
Finally, God does not punish us for not believing in Him. We punish ourselves by being disobedient (even to the point of professing disbelief). When you tell God that you don't believe in Him and want nothing to do with Him, He obliges. But there is an accounting for how we conduct our lives. And EVERYONE falls short. Therefore, God provided the way of reconciliation, through His Son. The same grace that God provided for me, He provides for you. It's really just a matter of accepting His gift. That you choose to reject it does not lay blame at God's feet. The blame falls squarely with you, because YOU reject a free gift that required a great payment. God is in the business of saving people from the punishment they bring upon themselves. But as you continue to bring accusations against Him that are, truly, your own doing, you only heap greater coals of destruction upon yourself. You can choose to continue (and your demeanor indicates that is how you seek to proceed) or you can have your eyes opened and your heart filled and walk a different path.
And His desire for me to believe in Him is so I can have full confidence in His promise of grace. It is for my benefit, my peace of mind, my strength of heart to believe. For in it, I know that He has the authority to make the promise and keep the promise.
This is technically true, we're all curious on the subject of a deity, whether it be negative or curious, but in the case that a god does really exist, that does not exactly mean it's the Biblical Abrahamic god. You're open to the possibility of that right? -
washclothrepairman — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 08:13 AM)
There's no reason to believe in any god, much less your god. None. So it's perfectly reasonable to assume it does not exist, just as it's perfectly reasonable to assume there are no unicorns living on Pluto. Sure, we don't know for a fact that there aren't, but an intelligent, rational and sane person doesn't even consider it a possibility.
What I believe is not relevant here and doesn't change the fact that devoting your life to a poorly-written fictional character is wasting your life. It's tragic. I truly doe feel very sorry for you. It makes me a little sad to know you're only really half a person.
Never trust a black man named "Chip." -
PoisonedDragon — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 08:29 AM)
It's not good for you or anyone else, no matter how much comfort and joy you claim to get from it.
If people had devoted the effort spent on religion for the past two millennia, instead seeking to further knowledge and benefit mankind, we would likely be traveling the stars by now.
*
*
Ȥ -
smithjgs — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 08:37 AM)
Meh, just another version of Hive mentality that theophobiacs desperately crave for some reason while championing individuality as long as its the exact same way they think.
Boring!
Sagan was a better person than just the quote used to your benefit.
It is far better that people can do what they like including worship they have no reason to think is not real, rather than pining for something as silly as a Star Trek fantasy.
It's goofy and childish to be bothered by them when ones like you suck at coercing them to an inferior view.
If this is Locke, then who's in there? -
PoisonedDragon — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 09:09 AM)
Sagan was a better person than just the quote used to your benefit.
That wasn't the quote. This is:
For thousands of years humans were oppressed as some of us still are by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea. Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the Sun. And that the stars were very far away (pg. 174)
The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were perfect and divine. The fundamental idea that the Earth is a planet, that we are citizens of the Universe, was rejected and forgotten
After a long mystical sleep in which the tools of scientific inquiry lay moldering, the Ionian approach, in some cases transmitted through scholars at the Alexandrian Library, was finally rediscovered. The Western world reawakened. Experiment and open inquiry became once more respectable. Forgotten books and fragments were again read. Leonardo and Columbus and Copernicus were inspired by or independently retraced parts of this ancient Greek tradition (pg. 188)
What if the scientific tradition of the ancient Ionian Greeks had survived and flourished? That would have required many of the social forces of the time to have been different including the prevailing belief that slavery was natural and right. But what if that light that dawned in the eastern Mediterranean 2,500 years ago had not flickered out? What if science and the experimental method and the dignity of crafts and mechanical arts had been vigorously pursued 2,000 years before the Industrial Revolution? What if the power of this new mode of thought had been more generally appreciated? I sometimes think we might then have saved ten or twenty centuries. Perhaps the contributions of Leonardo would have been a thousand years ago and those of Albert Einstein five hundred years ago (pg. 209)
If the Ionian spirit had won, I think we a different we, of course might now be venturing into the stars. Our first survey ships to Alpha Centauri and Barnards Star, Sirius and Tau Ceti would have returned long ago. Great fleets of interstellar transports would be under construction in Earth orbit unmanned survey ships, liners for immigrants, immense trading ships to plow seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and writing. If we looked closely, we might see that the language was Greek. And perhaps the symbol on the bow of one of the first starships would be a dodecahedron, with the inscription Starship Theodorus of the Planet Earth. (pg. 210)
Ȥ -
washclothrepairman — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 04:22 PM)
If people had devoted the effort spent on religion for the past two millennia, instead seeking to further knowledge and benefit mankind, we would likely be traveling the stars by now.
Exactly. Religion is not only a waste of time, but it is actually harmful. It holds the human race back from its potential, and, I would say, it's destiny and its
right
.
It is a cancer of the mind. It causes people to be stupid and complacent, too busy saying "Things could be worse" to ask "How can things be better?" It makes people unquestioning slaves. Don't question authority, don't try to expand your understanding of the universe because you already have all the answers, and conveniently, they are are very short, simple answers that conform with our desires and prejudices. It makes people content with what they are given by society, and the scraps thrown to them by those above them economically instead of striving to improve things for everyone. They're too busy pining for the end of the world so somebody else will do the hard work and create paradise for them instead of creating paradise here for everyone to enjoy. It's a disgustingly lazy, selfish mindset that I just can't understand. Religion is an insidious, odious invasion, infection and perversion of the very thing that makes people people, and turn their backs and shun the very thing that makes the human race special and the thing that will save us: our intelligence and ingenuity.
Never trust a black man named "Chip."