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Author | Topic: Open letter to all Atheists. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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If you are offended by prayer in public places, or government institutions, that offends me. But what if I'm a real person, and what if therefore instead of saying that I'm "offended" by "prayer in public places", as apparently the imaginary people in your head do, I make like a real person and point out that entanglement of church and state violates the First Amendment? How do you feel about that, and why should I give a damn? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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I've always loved those verses, since I hate praying in public. It always feels like I'm just saying "ditto" to whatever the lead person is praying about. What's more annoying is that the prayer leaders know that this is what they're making you do, half the time when they're ostensibly talking to God they're really preaching at the congregation. Which is insincere.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Mathew 6:5-7 Yeah, but what does Republican Jesus think?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
You want to eliminate every religious thing, but that envokes your own belief, unless you can prove God doesn't exist. So it is absolutely 100% hypocritical. That would be hypocritical only if dronester and the rest of us wanted atheism to be an exception. But we don't. We agree, for example, that atheism should not be taught in public schools. Town hall meetings should not be kicked off by an official announcement that there is no God. Money should not bear the legend "IN GOD WE DON'T TRUST (BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ONE)". The principles of humanism should not be displayed in courthouses. No atheist advocates for such things to be done. Where, then is the hypocrisy?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Atheism not taught in schools? That's a good one. It's illegal. If you can find an instance where it's nonetheless being done, contact the ACLU. In the meantime, I am against it being done, as I'm sure is dronester. It is none of any public school teacher's business to tell children that there is no God, any more than to inculcate any other religious view, and we will say so plainly. So where is the hypocrisy?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Those are your beliefs. You are forcing them on the rest of us. No. This is why it is illegal for atheism to be taught in public schools; why town hall meetings are not kicked off by an official announcement that there is no God; why money doesn't bear the legend "IN GOD WE DON'T TRUST (BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ONE)"; and why the principles of humanism are not displayed in courthouses. Not only are these things not done, not only have I never sought for them to be done, but I don't want them to be done and would oppose any such proposal. In what way, then, am I forcing my beliefs on you? Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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For evolution to be true, there can be no God - or at the very least He would become a liar. That would only follow if God has announced that there was no such thing as evolution. If so, he would indeed be a liar. Also, he'd exist, and atheism would be false. But that would apply to any false statement. If God had announced that 2 + 2 = 5, that would also make God a liar. But it does not follow from that that people teaching that 2 + 2 = 4 are teaching atheism. Your reasoning is hard to follow. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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As far as separation of church and state goes, that should not be used to take God out of government. That's not what it was meant for. Well, perhaps on that subject we should listen to James Madison, who wrote the Bill of Rights. For example, he had this to say about the appointment of Congressional chaplains:
Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation. The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. This seems to shed some light on what he was thinking when he wrote the First Amendment. He also writes:
Religious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings & fasts are shoots from the same root with the legislative acts reviewed. [...] The members of a Govt as such can in no sense, be regarded as possessing an advisory trust from their Constituents in their religious capacities. They cannot form an ecclesiastical Assembly, Convocation, Council, or Synod, and as such issue decrees or injunctions addressed to the faith or the Consciences of the people. If you're really concerned about what the First Amendment was meant for, you now know that its author meant it to exclude such things as official ministers and official prayers.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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If 2 + 2 could ever equal 5, then that might suggest that the laws of logic are in fact evolving. From a purely materialistic point of view, an atheist has to consider that as a possibility. So it follows that an atheist is the one who may one day teach 2 + 2 = 5. Or maybe 2 + 2 = banana. I like that one better. You seem to have gone a little loopy.
The "days" and "nights" in Genesis clearly rule out evolution, from God's perspective anyways. That would be your perspective. If you can prove that it's God's perspective, then you will have proved that God exists and that he is wrong. Philosophers yet unborn will thank you. --- Look, consider the following scenario. Jack starts a new religion, which maintains that God is responsible for the sky being pink with green spots, and that God says so. Jill, a public school teacher who (as it happens) believes devoutly in God, but does not adhere to Jack's religion, happens to mention to her class that the sky is blue. Is she therefore teaching atheism? Was she teaching atheism before Jack founded his cult? If the members of the cult all lose their faith, does the claim that the sky is blue stop being atheist? This is absurd. Surely to be atheistic, a statement has to be, y'know, atheistic, it has to imply that there is no God, not that some particular sect is wrong about some particular question of fact.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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A blue sky is something we can observe just about every day, so she's no more teaching atheism then if she were to proclaim up is up and down is down. Or that true is true and false is false. Jack, on the other hand, in addition to his pink sky with green spots, might also declare that thick-boned, scaled theropods eventually morphed into hallow-boned, avian feathered flying things. But then, we can't observe that like we can the blue sky, so we would then know that Jack don't know Jack. The point is that you can't make a statement atheistic by incorporating the opposite of that statement into a theistic religion. This is true whether or not the statement can be checked by direct observation. We cannot directly observe the Earth's core, but if Jack started teaching that God had fashioned it out of billions of happy little monkeys, it would not become atheistic for Jill to teach that it's made of white-hot iron as scientists have inferred from the available evidence.
You're not suggesting atheism implies that there is no God, are you? Because that's unknowable from a natural worldview, so that would make atheism a belief system, possibly even a religion. It should certainly be treated as a religion for the purposes of interpreting the First Amendment, whether or not it technically is one. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Does evolution leave room for a supernatural Creator? Obviously.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
if atheism/evolution were true, then logic would be constantly changing and evolving. That may be the wildest non sequitur ever. You'll be the envy of all the other creationists.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
This was an open letter to Atheists who are offended by prayer. And yet the title of the thread was "Open letter to all Atheists."
Regardless, being offended by prayer offends me and IS hylocritcal. As no-one has expressed that view, it would be hard to demonstrate that such a person is a hypocrite. I can hardly think what form such hypocrisy would take --- someone who declares prayer offensive, perhaps, and then does a little genuflecting in private, sacrifices a few goats? It's not very likely, is it?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
My point regarding "atheist/evolution" is that they're both inseparable. I know there are christian evolutionists out there ... Then you know that your point is wrong. If you can have evolution without atheism, then evolution and atheism are separable.
... but you'll probably not find an atheistic creationist any time soon. But you could in principle have an atheist who denied evolution. Of course, he'd have to be nuts, but then some people are, even atheists. Fred Hoyle was a fine example.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
In what capacity? Did He create life and then just walk away? Well, that would be a creator God, wouldn't it? In that he'd be a God who created stuff. I don't claim that that's what happened, of course, but that would be a creator God compatible with evolution.
That doesn't make sense. A being capable of creating everything, must be more complex than His creation - otherwise He becomes obsolete. In other words, if He is more complex than we are, it's illogical to conclude that He would create us and then fade away into obscurity. I'm not sure you've grasped this whole "logic" thing. And God can do what he wants, that's the great thing about being God. That and the excellent dental plan.
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