The Good News

 I was reading a post which can be found here. In it the author complains about never getting any good news from atheists. I  almost felt bad for the author so I did my best to remedy the situation-

    “But there is good news, because of science we understand the mysteries of the world we live in more and more each day. Some of these discoveries help people live more productive and happy lives. Countless lives have been and more will be saved due to the progress of science. We understand the forces of nature to the point where we can predict events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions saving lives and property. We have seen incredible progress in technology which ironically, helps technology progress. We can answer many questions man has wondered about ever since he was able to ask the question. Yes, the good news is we are solving all the mysteries that mankind used to attribute to things like gods riding chariots across the sky. As we have solved these mysteries, and there are a countless number of them, none of the answers so far has been magic did it, or god did it. I suppose it would depend on if you have some odd need to believe a deity who allows the innocent to suffer and die every second of every day yet claims to have a deep love for us. It is bad news if you think a god wants you to pray to him/her/it when those prayers are pointless due to the fact your god has already made a 'plan' which can not and will not be altered. And it is indeed bad news if you had hopes that a nice mansion and a brand new car were awaiting you just past the heavenly gates a few moments after your death. If any of those applies in your case then it is no wonder you never hear any good news from atheists. I have trouble being troubled about it, to be honest.”

Violent Islam/Peacful Muslim

      

    I have been looking into Islam an Sharia Law. As I  learned about both I realized there was a deep divide among not only Atheists but among the general  population about how to consider the two subjects. I asked Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman, a writer and historian who formerly taught World History and Islamic Civilization at Golden Gate University in San Francisco  "Do You think in this country we should be worried about Sharia Law creeping into our existing legal system?" 

   he told  me "The only danger to our legal system would be banning free speech (that is not incitement).  Muslims have a legal arm (CAIR) that tries hard, but has not succeeded in overturning free speech. The Europeans, however, particularly the  British and French,  mistakenly thought they were fighting religious oppression when they began taking people to court for maligning religion.  It was intended to fight the holocaust deniers, but is now being used to  stifle criticism against Muslims.  European courts are now revisiting this issue."

 This is not to say we shouldn't pay attention. Our legal system may fall victim to isolated attempts at implementing Sharia  Law into our existing system. Just as we deal with creationist who try to sneak their learning plan into our school system. It's just one of those battles we must keep fighting over and over in order to keep our constitution free of unneeded and/or unfair changes. When we see an example of Sharia Law being inserted into our system as an alternative to our own legal system it must be stopped.

  When we see a judge making decisions based on their own belief system instead of applying the existing law, we must speak out against it. The biggest problem I have with Sharia Law is it combines two of the things I wholeheartedly believe should be kept separate for everyone's good. It combines religion and law into one and uses it to govern the people. As we all know this practice tends to result in unfair punishment and it often ignores the truth just as religion ignores the truth about itself. I have often wondered how believers would like it if we had a court system that was based on the same logic they use when considering religion. Sharia Law is that system and I don't want the lesson to be learned by example in the USA.

  Part 2

   Islam often called the peaceful religion. The problem is not everyone who follows this religion is peaceful. Someone tried to convince me that I was mistaken by questioning the peacefulness of Muslims. "Look at the Westboro Baptist Church. How do you think they look to people in the middle east?" 

  I would hope they look like radicals, and I would hope that they would also look like a dozen radicals, because that is what they are. A dozen people who follow the word of the bible closer than most any others. The example made me laugh out loud. It shows there are extremists in any religion, that's about it. When the number of extremists reaches the number we see in Islam I think it is fair to make certain assumptions. A friend of mine recently made a statement against Islam. He was then bombarded by Atheists who condemned him for labeling all Muslims. (the word 'muslim' was not in the statement)  Then as the comments went on he was criticized for calling all Muslims 'terrorists'. 

  I've seen this happen too many times. The intelligent Atheist turned into a blabbering moron because they make assumptions or just plain outright put words in another person's mouth. Then they proceed to rip into that person for what they claim was said. Why this happens I do not know but it is pathetic, annoying, and a complete waste of time. Instead of any discussion the author has to waste time explaining what should be obvious if people would only read the original post without twisting it like a pretzel and then bitching because they don't like the shape of it.

  The point I am making is Islam can be described as a violent religion, that is not incorrect. I think it needs to be realized that there are far more active violent Muslims than Christians and the level of their violence is alarming to me. I would think for anyone to say Islam is a peaceful religion without at the same time pointing out the violence which also stems from it is irresponsible. Just calling it peaceful and ignoring the reality is not going to change anything, it must be realized that almost daily people are blowing themselves up in order to kill others.

   Even if the fundamentalist Christians were to get into power  I doubt we would see anything like Sharia Law (at first anyways) Christians aren't saying rape and slavery are okay because the bible condones it. Radical Muslims say their violent laws are orders from their holy book and should not be questioned. Sharia law is only supposed to be applied to Muslims but how many times have we seen that not to be the case? Should we refrain from calling Cancer a deadly disease because not everyone dies from it? 

  Yes Muslims in the United States tend towards peaceful practice of their religion it would be irresponsible of me not to concede that point but we must understand there is another side to Islam and it is not peaceful, it is dangerous. It also has, by it's own admission, a desire to eliminate those who oppose them. That is a fact, we can not, and should not get angry just because someone points out the ugly side of truth.

 I don't see any reasonable person claiming anything that applies to an entire group except those people who want to dumb themselves down and make assumptions. Do we need to point out nothing is absolute after everything we say?

     Before I end I would like to address Atheists who dislike outspoken Atheists because they are "are no better than fundamentalist Christians"  getting into people's faces and demanding they are correct. There is a huge difference between the two. As long as outspoken Atheists base their arguments on things which are PROVEN TO BE TRUE they are NOTHING like the fundamentalist expecting you to just "have faith". So please stop trying to equate the two it's a lame attempt to insult people just because they don't do things the way you would. It doesn't make them wrong, it makes them different.  

  If an Atheist wants people to believe there is no possibility of any type of god,claims to know this for a fact, and expects everyone to think the same way, then they are arrogant and stupid. It still doesn't make them like a fundamentalist Christian. Our intelligence and our argument comes from realizing and admitting what we do not know and then working towards answers without any magical explanations.I hope that explains things.

God- version a.123abc

     Atheists and believers have a habit of equating religion with god, and that is not accurate. If you are going to consider god then you need to be specific in defining the term. People often tell me I hate god. I can't hate what isn't there. What I hate is the idea of god created by religion.  When people say you can't know god they are correct. No one can know god because we have no evidence god even exists. What religion does is present an artist's rendering of god.
   It would be like me asking you to draw me a picture of the 3rd planet from the star I was pointing at in the night sky. You would know only the very basics. It is a planet,so it is probably round. What else would you know? Nothing. You wouldn't even know for sure if there is a third planet orbiting that star. So it would be impossible to go any further and know you were correct. 
  You could go into detail and claim it has one large ocean. It also has creatures that can live both on land and breath underwater. The trees grow to the height of skyscrapers. you could say the days last a month and the sun is the color green in the sky. You could claim anything you want, the most important things to remember are all the attributes you give this planet would come from what you know about living on earth and they are all made up, you couldn't even call them educated guesses.
  The bible stories are the science fiction stories of that time. These days we have Star Wars. Back then they had angels, beasts with multiple heads, turning water into wine and knocking women up with out having intercourse. The authors of the bible were The Steven Speilburgs and George Lucas' of their time.When they imagined the end of times they thought of famine, disease, hordes of locus covering the land, and earthquakes. Those were the things that were scary to them. Those were the things that they had night mares about. If you were to write about what was going to happen during the rapture would you say a horde of locus is going to swarm across America and eat us? Probably not. It would be more like the earth is going to have climate change and turn into an uninhabitable sphere of floating ice, if you were the scientific type. The younger generation might say the internet will become sentient and enslave humanity.  The bible is science fiction before science had had a chance to catch up. Now science has passed up religion and is well on its way to destroying it all together accept for the sentimental few who just can't give up the old ways. (see people who still use record players, or commodore 64 enthusiasts)
   I think Atheists have been going about it the wrong way for the most part (from what I've seen) We shouldn't be debating if a god (or gods) exist, we should be discussing it. There is no way for us to know one way or the other. If people want to believe in god they should realize they must believe in something created from no actual knowledge except that it is the he/she/it/them that created the universe. That's all, you can not give any other characteristics because they are unknown.
This is where religion comes in and this is where we need to concentrate our efforts. We need to make sure believers know we do not consider god and religion as the same thing, they are not interchangeable. They define god according to their bible,book or imagination . We don't define god the same way. I think many if not most Atheists do not consider this when speaking to or debating believers. I'm sure most know what I'm talking about though, they just dont use the argument against believers. It would give people a far different impression if Atheists were to say "You know I'm not sure, there could be a god." which any reasonable person would have to admit simply because we don't know everything. You can claim to know there is no possibility of a god no matter what. If you do believe this then please stay away from me because I can't stand stupid people who think they know everything and feel the need to show it off, they annoy the hell out of me. you can't even explain to them why you think they suck cause there is no way for the concept to break through the stupid.
 
     A believer will be more open to discussion if you find some common ground. Tell the you can not completely dismiss the possibility of some type of creator.Then you can make them own their god who in most cases is a bi-polar dick. The reason he is a dick is because mankind as a whole is a bi-polar dick too. Maybe you should refrain from calling their god bi-polar or a dick (use your judgment) but most religious people who are intelligent will admit there are aspects of their religions god they are not quite sure of. Bring up the way their god allows so many people to starve to death. Do those people deserve that terrible suffering? Why would a god as described in their bible do that? To say god's it's god's plan doesn't make any sense couldn't god have found another more humane way to kill people if he must kill them? The bible itself is a contradiction why would god allow it to be so vague? If we go after the man made version of god and cause people to question it using common sense it may work better than simply walking up and saying "I'm an Atheist, there is no god" that tends to shut down any further constructive discussion. This isn't a show of uncertainty or a weakening of position, it is a way of smarter interaction with believers. Not everyone is going to be able to pull it off and it isn't a silver bullet but it may work better than what we are doing now.
 The last piece of advice- Never get into a debate with anyone as to whether god exists or not. You can't win because, like I said it is unknowable at this point. Make sure you know what god you are debating about. Once you lock the person on the religious side into a certain man made version of god you can easily come out on top using common sense.

  I'd like to thank Frank Apisa for the inspiration and assistance in forming these thoughts without laying any of the blame for them upon him

Atheist Christopher Hitchens and Christian Dinesh D'Souza- Debate on religion

I'm going to post a Re-broadcast of a taped debate between Atheist Christopher Hitchens and Christian Dinesh D'Souza on the value of organized religion, moderated by Brent Walters.

D'Souza doesn't do a real good job of presenting his case, clearly outmatched by the logic that makes up Atheism. The fact that Christopher Hitchens is the man representing the Atheist point of view is kinda like pounding in nails with a 20lb hammer. Brent Walters, who takes no side in the debate does a pretty good job pointing out what most Atheists will be yelling at their speakers while they listen. While I was listening it was hard not to be a bit bothered by the thought of a man like Hitchens being taken by cancer. He is the kind of person the world needs more of, not because of what he believes in so much as the way he arrives at his conclusions. D'Souza is clearly doomed from the start. I found myself wishing the debate would have been a bit more even but then realized there really is no way that could happen and it still be a reasonable intelligent discussion.

The show is in 2 parts and each hour starts with news for the first 10 minutes. Brent gives his take on the debate and it is pretty clear even he is impressed with Hitchens and his style. The format of the debate is another thing that makes this an enjoyable listen as each speaker is allowed limited time to speak. D'Souza would ramble on for years if this were not the case I think.

Here are the links-

Hitchens/D'Souza debate part 1



Hitchens/D'Souza debate part 2