scary dude......
Actually quite the opposite. When you eliminate the fear of dying, life becomes a lot of fun.
do you pray before you fly?
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Actually quite the opposite. When you eliminate the fear of dying, life becomes a lot of fun.
Checkout_my_Six
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Can you tell me what bad comes from atheism? Because plenty of bad comes from religion.
Yes, a lack of sense of connection to humanity and life in general, no sense of purpose. The society we have now. Even the religious don't really believe the lies they are being told, they just pretend to, because in each of us the truth exists, and it isn't what is taught. Since the scientific community refuses to engender the concept of a superlative intelligence, and the religious community lies about it to make a profit, mankind is left with no leadership to take us into the future. We were inspired to science to correct the lies and misperceptions of religion, not to deny God.
When there is no belief except chaos, then there is no order to civilization and we allow greed and violence to dominate society, as they do now, and we will never evolve into what we are meant to become. The lack of understanding and belief in chaos as the driving force in the universe that is atheism espouses is what empowers men to perpetrate evil against their own conscience. That is basically how we live now, and it will end in our extinction because as individuals, we cannot persevere, only as a whole. But we don't believe we are a whole, so we kill each other, and by doing so, we kill our ourselves, our children, and our future as a species, as well as many other species.
Now, can you answer my question? "What GOOD does it DO?"
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asechrest
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Facts not in evidence.Yes, a lack of sense of connection to humanity and life in general, no sense of purpose.
overdrive148
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overdrive148
Yes, a lack of sense of connection to humanity and life in general, no sense of purpose. The society we have now. Even the religious don't really believe the lies they are being told, they just pretend to, because in each of us the truth exists, and it isn't what is taught. Since the scientific community refuses to engender the concept of a superlative intelligence, and the religious community lies about it to make a profit, mankind is left with no leadership to take us into the future. We were inspired to science to correct the lies and misperceptions of religion, not to deny God.
When there is no belief except chaos, then there is no order to civilization and we allow greed and violence to dominate society, as they do now, and we will never evolve into what we are meant to become. The lack of understanding and belief in chaos as the driving force in the universe that is atheism espouses is what empowers men to perpetrate evil against their own conscience. That is basically how we live now, and it will end in our extinction because as individuals, we cannot persevere, only as a whole. But we don't believe we are a whole, so we kill each other, and by doing so, we kill our ourselves, our children, and our future as a species, as well as many other species.
Now, can you answer my question? "What GOOD does it DO?"
asechrest
En-Route
Isn't this a strange question, though? Does the null hypothesis need to "do good?" If we could convince some people that a magical unicorn mermaid fairy would smile upon them if only they'd give to charity, would we lambast anti-unicornists for bringing evil upon the world?Now, can you answer my question? "What GOOD does it DO?"
write-stuff
En-Route
With all due respect, this is another old canard. It comes from a basic misunderstanding (and misapplication) of the second law of thermodynamics. The 2nd law stipulates a closed system. Biological systems receive a continuous new supply of energy from the sun, i.e. they are not closed systems.
That's a complete non sequitur.Yes, a lack of sense of connection to humanity and life in general, no sense of purpose. The society we have now. Even the religious don't really believe the lies they are being told, they just pretend to, because in each of us the truth exists, and it isn't what is taught. Since the scientific community refuses to engender the concept of a superlative intelligence, and the religious community lies about it to make a profit, mankind is left with no leadership to take us into the future. We were inspired to science to correct the lies and misperceptions of religion, not to deny God.
When there is no belief except chaos, then there is no order to civilization and we allow greed and violence to dominate society, as they do now, and we will never evolve into what we are meant to become. The lack of understanding and belief in chaos as the driving force in the universe that is atheism espouses is what empowers men to perpetrate evil against their own conscience. That is basically how we live now, and it will end in our extinction because as individuals, we cannot persevere, only as a whole. But we don't believe we are a whole, so we kill each other, and by doing so, we kill our ourselves, our children, and our future as a species, as well as many other species.
Now, can you answer my question? "What GOOD does it DO?"
You're telling me that people need to be threatened with punishment or tempted with reward to be good people? Don't sound like good people to me.
So what good has come from atheism? I suppose you could say a belief in a higher power than some mythical sky daddy that will take care of everything has lead to every scientific discovery made, every hypothesis tested. Otherwise we would all be sitting around in mud huts praying for sky daddy to fix everything instead of bettering humankind.
write-stuff
En-Route
Well said.
Dr. O
Pattern Altitude
To the OP:
No..... But my passengers seem quite fervent.
No..... But my passengers seem quite fervent.
I would ask, what good has religion done?
It has hindered the scientific method as far back as our earliest astronomers.
It has suppressed the rights of women and continues to this day.
It has caused war, famine, extremism.
You'll say "oh well! religion has fed and clothed the poor!"
well, no. What it has done is line the pockets of it's leaders, built shrines to itself, and spent little helping humankind while spending a lot to help itself, in guise of helping others.
And you say we need religion to stay in touch with humanity? Actually, we don't. The least religious states donate just as much to charity as the most religious states.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friend...-atheists-a-new-study-puts-that-myth-to-rest/
It has hindered the scientific method as far back as our earliest astronomers.
It has suppressed the rights of women and continues to this day.
It has caused war, famine, extremism.
You'll say "oh well! religion has fed and clothed the poor!"
well, no. What it has done is line the pockets of it's leaders, built shrines to itself, and spent little helping humankind while spending a lot to help itself, in guise of helping others.
And you say we need religion to stay in touch with humanity? Actually, we don't. The least religious states donate just as much to charity as the most religious states.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friend...-atheists-a-new-study-puts-that-myth-to-rest/
narchee
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Long Blinker
As an atheist myself I will admit that religion can help put people at ease. Trying to explain to a child that someone they know has died is a whole lot easier if you can offer up the fantasy that they will see them again in "heaven". Guilty.
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
Bad data/interpretation.
Just because a state is more or less religious than the next one doesn't mean that the people giving are or aren't more religious than those who aren't. Plus there's more to it than giving money.
it's not the only study out there.
then you need to consider how much of the religious donations are TO THE CHURCH and where the money actually goes.
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
No, what I am saying is this:
Group A has 5 people, and they make $200,000 collectively. 4 religious people and 1 atheist.
They donated collectively $10,000 to non-religious charities.
Group B has 5 people, and they make $200,000 collectively. 1 religious person and 4 atheists.
They donated collectively $10,000 to non-religious charities.
You can say by looking at that, that atheists give as much as religious people. But looking further you may find that everyone didn't give $2,000/person. It may have been that 4 in one group gave $2,500, and one person in the other group gave the entire $10,000. That's why it's bad data.
You can't just average it all out, and say these people give the same % as these people.
Dav8or
Final Approach
I have no fear.....peace with God bro.
And strap a Go Pro on so the rest of us that still fear death can watch.
How do you explain our inaction in Africa? How do you explain why we use 2/3rds of the world's resources in luxury while people go without food and water and get slaughtered? The only time we have shown concern in Africa in the last 2 decades is when Ebola threatened the U.S. and when piracy threatened our merchants. How do you explain our inaction in Asia where people die continuously working for slave wages in deadly conditions just to stock our shelves with cheap junk goods?
How do you explain our continued support of killing anyone in the way of gaining more resources that we waste using them as inefficiently as possible, and use to grossly polite the planet so we can have cheap junk?
How do you explain war after war after war, sending our children to their deaths to defend a financial system that was never meant to exist from the day money was conceived of?
How do you explain the hatred of each other within our own country?
Yes, good is needed for continued survival, without it, entropy will ensue, and that leads to extinction. Entropy is the natural result of chaos, and entropy is destructive, not constructive. The fact that entropy is not universal and is actually countered in the domain of living organisms is one of the greatest proofs of a superlative intelligence bringing order, because ordering things from chaos is the domain of intelligence.
This is the result of priests lying about the nature of God, using the concept to their own advantage, aka Blasphemy, taking God's name in vain (for self). This problem was addressed long, long, ago, however it has never been eliminated.
The problem is we are a lazy and covetous species, and with no principle that binds to each other, we will take advantage of each other to the detriment of our evolution. It has come to the point where that detriment will end in our extinction. We do not care about the future, the planet, or any life but our own, and deny with full vigor our responsibility towards anyone, or anything, besides ourselves. We even deny that our wasteful and destructive actions have a negative consequence, we always look to shift blame from ourselves to either others, or the random chaos of nature. All so we can have some extra TVs in the house, or buy our kids $150 sneakers.
Church is the heart of the problem. Every religion is based on blasphemy and deviciveness, not only separating mam from man, but man from God. It wasn't until Constantine usurped Christianity to build imperial strength that Christ was deified and a wall was built that separated man from God, making the toll booth at the Church the only way to get through that wall.
Christ's point was we were all part of God, and that God was within us all. We are all connected through the intelligence we use, it is 'the singularity' of physics, and it is part of everything in creation.
asechrest
En-Route
I didn't ask if good was needed. I'm asking about the validity of your question. It's like asking what good is provided by your disbelief in the Easter bunny. Or your disbelief in Xenu. It's the null hypothesis. It's not good, or bad, it just is.
PS - Life does not "counter" entropy, and decreases in local entropy are not limited to the domain of living organisms. Your fridge/freezer decreases local entropy every day.
"Just is" does not exist, it's the answer of ignorance, same as "Because the bible says so." Or "Its God's will, don't question God", all of which are false.
Checkout_my_Six
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Rev. Henning.....get'n all preachy. 
asechrest
En-Route
"Just is" may not exist to a theist. But a non-theist is forced to maintain it as a possibility. I do sometimes wish I had the ability to explain the grandest questions of the universe by hand-waving it all off as the doing of a supreme being (though I have no idea how I'd chose which supreme being of the many that are proposed). But, that ability doesn't yet seem to exist in me.
I'm happy that you have all the answers, but I would suggest that a stance that claims all the answers might deserve consideration as the real position of ignorance.
The ability actually does exist in you, and in everyone, you just have to access it, and that requires... faith. A faith in science and perception is all you need, and the willingness to go places with your mind that you can't prove exist. When combined, the answers become clear. All the answers are not available to us yet, just the ones that regard our multiverse.
overdrive148
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overdrive148
Also Henning, what makes you the end-all authority on the 'facts' that you tell everyone? Let me guess, personal experience creating a universe? God took you on a tour? You state an awful lot of definites for something that is not possible to know. For example...
"God took me on a tour" is about the most accurate way to put it. Try some meditation some time, use your tinnitus as your focal point. It's in everyone's capability to do so. Once you lear to access the dark energy spectrum, all the information in the multiverse is on tap, the trick is learning to order it.
petrolero
Pattern Altitude
Really? As I look around I'd say we've done a damn fine job. We have shelter, enough to eat, we don't freeze in the winter or bake in the summer or drown in floods or get eaten by wild animals. We've eliminated or mitigated major diseases over large portions of the earth. We have invented uncountable numbers of labor-saving devices, and the energy to power them, that have made it possible for 7 billion humans to inhabit this planet. I look out at the streets and I don't see trash or pollution or sewage. Nor do I see that much crime. What we call crime is the way of nature - take, fight, claim, rape, kill, repeat - and we have greatly diminished the need for those primal tactics even if they still exist.
I don't think you give nearly enough credit to the immense good that humans have done for humans and for fish and wildlife. And yes, human life is my standard. I do not equate birds and fish and plants with human life, though I don't condone wasting those resources any more than any other. Some hold pristine "nature" as their standard with no regard to human life such that perfection is earth with no humans. That is a suicidal ethos and I reject it.
Take a look around. The more advanced we are and the more energy we consume (yep) the cleaner our environment is. Research the state of rivers and streams from even as recently as the turn of the 20th century. We are vastly better off today - with vastly more energy consumption.
Some may wish to predict doom and gloom because of carbon dioxide in the air but the evidence that climate changes are a) statistically significant above background variation, b) CO2-caused, c) human-caused, d) a net negative to human life, and e) human-curable for less than the cost of doing nothing is very weak indeed.
Brighten up, sunshine.
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We have nothing, we have wars. Individuals have done well by exploiting others. As a species we are failing.
jesse
Touchdown! Greaser!
How do you know this tour god took you on was indeed a tour directed by god and not a malfunction of your brain?
Where do I sign up to go on this tour? It sounds enlightening. What is the best word to describe how you feel after completing said tour?
petrolero
Pattern Altitude
We have lots of bad things and always will. That doesn't mean we are failing on balance, it means we're not done. The world can't be perfected it can only be improved. I suspect you and I would disagree on the means, but we aren't failing.
petrolero
Pattern Altitude
You subscribe to a zero-sum mindset. If zero-sum were true we'd still be in the stone ages. It is possible to create real wealth but you won't hear that from the likes of the people you quote in your sig.
overdrive148
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overdrive148
I'm back from my tour, it said everything he stated is essentially wrong. Now which of us is "correct"? And who can say?
On top of that, how do you know which God you went on this tour with?
MAKG1
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MAKG
What's the dark energy spectrum?
I've got some discussion about dark energy in my dissertation, but I don't know WTH you're talking about.
Dav8or
Final Approach
In all your travels through the multiverse, have you encountered an advanced species with technology similar to us that was "successful"?
I think you're being a little hard on our species. We have no examples to follow, we get no guidance from a higher power and for whatever reason, we weren't made/evolved perfect. We're making it up as we go along as best we can and coming from living naked out in the open with a life expectancy of 30 years or less to where we are now, I think we've done pretty damn good for amateur first timers.
Well, that's really the question isn't it? But again you have to ask, "why does the brain 'imagine' anything at all?" It's the issue that 'faith' revolves around.
You can take the tour anywhere you like, because it's an existential tour you sign up for by releasing your mind from the bounds of the limits of your physical senses. If you would like instruction on this, the Vipassna people (www.dharma.org) can help you out, they won't even accept your money for the first visit, but you have to dedicate 11 days. I recommend focusing on tinnitus rather than breathing though, apparently it's the frequency that Dark Energy is perceived on, and Dark Energy is the carrier wave that all information travels on and excites quanta with, or at least it's a harmonic of it. It was the key for me anyway.
The feeling after the first round is one of being overwhelmed with information and thoroughly confused as we have not yet evolved the ability to access the multiversal database with any control, so you don't really understand what universe the information pertains to. After a while you can sort of work it out once you quit being overwhelmed, start asking the right questions, and start listening to the 'tour guide' answering those questions.
MAKG1
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MAKG
Henning, what do you think dark energy is?
It's clearly not the same thing the supernovae guys observed.
It's clearly not the same thing the supernovae guys observed.
In all your travels through the multiverse, have you encountered an advanced species with technology similar to us that was "successful"?
I think you're being a little hard on our species. We have no examples to follow, we get no guidance from a higher power and for whatever reason, we weren't made/evolved perfect. We're making it up as we go along as best we can and coming from living naked out in the open with a life expectancy of 30 years or less to where we are now, I think we've done pretty damn good for amateur first timers.
There are many successful species out there, and even more that do not succeed. Ask Buzz Aldrin his opinion on the subject. The reason SETI fails to sense anything is because all species that have succeeded communicate (and the very advanced travel) on the Dark Energy spectrum which we don't have access to yet.
No, we are not doing well, because we do not produce anything of value. Our purpose is to develop new information and convert cosmic matter to Dark Energy through the process of thought to grow the multiverse with. You see, we are just cells of this organism, but we are cancerous cells, producing little of value, mostly destruction. We are doing very poorly in fact as we have refused to evolve for so long, we have reached the end of our term, and will go extinct before ever being born.
