Still, can’t get beyond cheap one liners guy???
@thatoneguy: This is only difficult for nerds on the autism spectrum -Says the guy hiding in face paint who also believes Trump is a great president.
Some judge of character and intellectual you turn out to be.
Incredible,
Trump is the best Christians and do - that says something ugly about Christians.
And they make fun of rationalist and folks who trust science over supernatural.
Nonsense. The study says participation in religious activities provided more benefit than other social activities which means spiritual belief is itself beneficial in a way that political belief, etc is not. -- one guyIt doesn't say that. It's bad sociology to say that. I'll give you pass because sociologists have been doing this for decades, but just compare what you just said, what do people do when they participate in religious activities vs participating in political organizations or just about anything else? At church, you are welcomed even if your life is in a mess, some really thrive on those who need help, they ask you how you are feeling not what you are doing, they sing together, they ask for a few dollars and some volunteer time but you aren't kicked out for not doing those things, they know your whole family and they celebrate their life events. So of course there is more benefit.
Okay, back to the bigger reality here:
… Jesus did not create the world, never claimed to. Did he?
… Jesus was a human (okay a singular human, perhaps), but still a human concerned with human affairs –
… But you know, though it may be unrecognized to the Faith Blinded – God’s Creation contains a heck of a lot more than, just human affairs!!!
Lausten said; It doesn’t say that. It’s bad sociology to say thatI agree, there is no difference in organized religion and organized social order. You either belong or you don't. In religion you can become devout adherent or rebellious apostate. In society you can become a good citizen or become a criminal. In principle there is no difference between the two social arrangements.
In Muslim countries, being apostate is a social criminal act. Social order rests on religious devotion (or fear) …
I agree. I would add, we evolved to eat too much sugar. I’m just saying that not everything that we evolved to do is ultimately what is best for us. …We evolved such that a significant portion of us will obsequiously bow our will to a charismatic charlatan. But that is not what is best for us.Religious belief is objectively better for us than atheism.
Says the guy hiding in face paint who also believes Trump is a great presidentWhy are you talking about face paint?
.Some judge of character and intellectual you turn out to beI'm not wrong about atheist nerds. Thinking doesn't have to be rigidly logical to be valid, but they can't help it. Most regular people don't have that problem but unfortunately most atheists do.
Incredible,Trump is the best Christians and do – that says something ugly about Christians.
And they make fun of rationalist and folks who trust science over supernatural.
Religious belief is objectively better for us than atheism.Oneguy - appears to have some basis for his thoughts, might even read on occasion, but always has bald assertion to fall back on.
Trump has very little to do with Christianity.What is that supposed to mean?
Prosperity Christianity has very little to do with Jesus’s Christianity -
yet, yet, they still embrace and try to own the trademark of Jesus “lord of men”.
Although guess the guy hiding behind the face paint (figure that one out for yourself) has a point when he claims Rationalists and Children of the Intellectual Enlightenment have no soul.
That is what they have been taught by the Faith-Shackled and they’ve been absolutely impotent to impact that narrative. So they accept the slander in silent acquiescence.
That is precisely why I think my attitude of EARTH CENTRISM and a genuine appreciation for DEEP TIME & EVOLUTION are so important.
I possess a soul and faith that Christian blow hards can’t touch.
You folks seem to get your religion from listen to what others are telling you. Me I took the Biblical words seriously: SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND!
Instead of listening to others,
I had my own travels in the wilderness and challenged God and learned as much as I could with my eyes and body and spirit - I learned what Jesus’ Passion was all about, from living it and experienced the burning on a cross of my own making, and it has taught me the real lesson of Jesus’ resurrection and life after death.
A lesson meant to help people through challenging lives, not for after our physical death, when our show is over!
Yes, it all unfolds here on Earth during our life times - when you die all you have to look forward to is the long deep sleep, which isn’t such bad thing if you’ve been “present” and spent your life living and watching and experiencing and reflecting on - that’s how you get some sense of God, not by listening to leaders telling you what you want to hear.
And before dreaming up your next empty one-liner, think about this God Christians claim to be worshipping. Omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. In other words, God permeates all. Right. If God is real. Hell, if God is anything, it permeates all.
Then tell me that only one tribe of people have access to him. That’s self obsessed lunacy, moon dreaming and all that. God is accessible to anyone who makes a sincere, honest, genuine effort.
Of course, what you find might not measure up to the imaginary Christian God, who is only concerned with the self-serving struggles of petty people in total disregard for the physical Earth that created us.
Such tunnel vision - and look where it has taken this world and the people it created.
What is that supposed to mean? Prosperity Christianity has very little to do with Jesus’s Christianity – yet, yet, they still embrace and try to own the trademark of Jesus “lord of men”.Trump wasn't elected because of his "Christianity" -- he doesn't even care about religion.
And I don’t care about Jesus vs prosperity Christian garbage you’re trying to drop in this thread.
Damned straight I am - because they can’t be separated.
And I dare say you guy are demonstrated one of the most horrendous problems with the religion faith shackled crowd - you take it as your right to ignore facts and physical reality.
@thatoneguy Trump wasn’t elected because of his “Christianity” — he doesn’t even care about religion.False Idol — Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump
ByALEX MORRIShttps: //www Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump
… And without the evangelical voting bloc, no Republican candidate could hope to have a path to the presidency. Evangelicals — a term that today refers to people who believe that Jesus died for their sins, that the Bible is the word of God, that every believer has a “born again” or salvation moment, and that the good news of Jesus should be widely disseminated — make up as much as a quarter of the country, or close to 80 million people. Around 60 percent vote, more than any other demographic, and among white evangelical voters, more than three-quarters tend to go to Republicans, thanks to wedge issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and transgender rights.
Trump was exactly the type of character you would expect “values voters” to summarily reject — even before the famed “grab ’em by the pussy” tape, the optics weren’t great. He never gained a majority of Christian votes in the primary. Even after he secured the nomination and named Mike Pence to be his VP, a survey of Protestant pastors conducted by Christian polling group LifeWay Research that summer found that only 39 percent of evangelical pastors planned to vote for him. …
(of course you’d have to read all of it for the juicy details)
https: //www theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/03/bill-dallas-christian-nationalist-right-donald-trumpHow a data-backed Christian nationalist machine helped Trump to power
With help from a vast evangelical network and data on almost the entire US voting population, the Christian right may have found the boost it neededKatherine Stewart - Tue 3 Mar 2020
…
In March 1998, Dallas had a holy visitation, telling him to start a satellite network delivering ministry training programs to churches around the country. And he did – conceiving of a national network of evangelical pastors and other church leaders. As it turns out, this was exactly what the growing Christian nationalist movement needed. …
… Dallas soon established a fruitful partnership with George Barna, the California–based evangelical pollster. It was a match made in heaven. …
… It’s not surprising to see David Barton’s name pop up here: he’s the Where’s Waldo of the Christian nationalist movement. Garlow, is recognizable from California’s rightwing political scene; a key force behind the passage of California’s 2008 anti– marriage equality amendment known as proposition 8. …
… In December 2015, Chris Vickery, an information technology specialist who hunted for data breaches as a hobby, came upon a massive database on 191 million US citizens. It contained data belonging to registered voters, from cellphone numbers to evidence of gun ownership. A second breach contained even more detailed information – including income levels, whether the person was a fan of Nascar, had a “Bible lifestyle”, or had an interest in hunting or fishing. …
“We have about 200 million files, so we have pretty much the whole voting population in our database,” said Dallas. “What we do is we track to see what’s going to make somebody vote either one way or not vote at all.”
{and so on and so forth - interesting article - another to ignore as though it didn’t exist - ehh???}
Understanding Why Religious Conservatives Would Vote for Trump By ANDREW T. WALKER February 10, 2020 6:30 AMIn January 2021, someone will take the presidential oath of office, and religious conservatives will undoubtedly play a crucial role in whom it will be. Their influence will be the focus of an untold number of postmortems, of the type they’ve been accustomed to hearing since 2016, when the notorious “81 percent” of evangelicals voted for the unlikeliest of candidates: Donald Trump. There are two competing interpretations of Trump’s enthusiastic support from religious conservatives: that it is a lesser-of-two-evils transaction based on self-interest, or that it shows a voting bloc compromised by every form of democratic vice, whether racism, nativism, or nationalism. …
The mystery of evangelical Trump support? Daniel D. Miller First published: 24 March 2018 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12351https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8675.12351
@thatoneguy And I don’t care about Jesus vs prosperity Christian garbage you’re trying to drop in this thread.Of course you don't because it reveals how disingenuous your claims are.
@thatoneguy Religious belief is objectively better for us than atheism.That's utter nonsense.
Or.
How about defining atheism, it would help us understand who you are actually talking about - real people or convenient straw men?
Here’s my definition of atheism: Rejecting the notion that there is a God personally interested in my life.
Rejecting the notion that our personal selves live on beyond the death of our bodies.
In other words, heaven and hell are things confined to our living days - after death it’s a deep deep eternal sleep from which there will be no awakening.
And you know my soul and being is at peace with that. Because I have the awareness that allowed me to develop into an Earth Centrist, which is far superior than the notions self-obsessions for Christians hold so dearly - they’ll kill for.
Look at the Christian Right - it is ALL about collecting instilling fear, and gaining money and power.
The Christian Rights’ rabid anger, enemy fabrication and terror of anyone who thinks differently, makes it obvious they have no spiritual peace. They are hanging on to false threads and deep down they’re spirit knows it - the cognitive dissonance must be overwhelming.
Thus we see supposed Christians totally disavow the teaching of Jesus in favor of the gluttonous power-hungry insanity of Trump World.
And other other Christian denying what we can see on the news and in our communities.
Your definition of atheism is better known as Deism. Most atheists are materialists who believe in nothing supernatural and replace that with a belief in logic or science itself which borders on worship.
Humans evolved to be religious so any deviation from that is best understood as a disorder. One fact that should stand out to atheists is that societies where atheism is most common – Europe and East Asia – are going extinct, whereas the rest of the world is religious and surviving. There is a connection between large-scale loss of religion and loss of everything else.
As for your take on evangelicals, they are victims of liberal democracy in that they lost the faith they were raised with back in the 60’s-70’s and we born again as atomized middle aged adults. They have more in common with you than they do with me and my side.
They’re also irrelevant compared to religions worldwide.
Oneguy said: "Humans evolved to be religious so any deviation from that is best understood as a disorder."2 things erroneous in that statement.
You seem to think that any deviation from what we have generally evolved to do is a “disorder”. That is wrong. As I said before, we have evolved to eat too much sugar. Those humans who refrain from eating too much sugar, do not have a disorder. As those humans who refrain from superstition, also, do not have a disorder.
I say that we did not evolve to be religious. Rather, we evolved to be social AND we evolved to be superstitious. That combination can tend to wind up as religiosity of some sort. However, as humans, we also evolved meta-thinking abilities such that we can understand that our superstitions are false beliefs. So we don’t have to maintain our superstitions, if we are able to think adequately.
Oneguy said: "One fact that should stand out to atheists is that societies where atheism is most common — Europe and East Asia — are going extinct, whereas the rest of the world is religious and surviving. There is a connection between large-scale loss of religion and loss of everything else."The two links, you gave, are long studies that did not say anything that I saw about "low birth rate" in those countries being about religion or lack of religion being a cause. Apparently that is just an assertion that you came up with that you did not provide a link to support.
Also, those societies are not going extinct, I suspect that when their contingencies change sufficiently, they will start pumping out baby humans again. And I don’t think they will need to become religious to do so.
Anyway, you need to come up with some evidence to support your outlandish assertion that “There is a connection between large-scale loss of religion and loss of everything else.”
I can see why oneguy sticks to short posts now. The longer his post the more he can get wrong. So, one question, on this:
They have more in common with you than they do with me and my side.What "side" are you?
Oh, yeah, on the Europeans. You’ve noticed that the Catholics from Central America and Muslims from the Middle East are flocking to these places that you are say are shrinking, right? Why is that? Could it be they want what’s there? Lots of dynamics I know, some of them kind of convoluted, like how the rich nations exploited them to get where they are, but now they want the stuff. Well, it’s kind of their’s in a way, partly. The question is not which country is better or which belief system, it’s how can we take the best of each and make a sustainable, peaceful world.
They have more in common with you than they do with me and my side.
Like does Guy think heaven is waiting for him?
Does he think when he prays that God takes time out to listen to him?
Does this God he prays to really judge you on the amount of praises one can heap on him?
Would love for hims to try to seriously give us some impression of what, “me and my side” is?
Also I’d be very curious to know how much that malicious clown - whom Russians with Christian extremists and social media manipulation helped planted - in the White House represents “him and his side”?
Tims points out the untrustworthiness of a Christian’s “word”,
The two links, you gave, are long studies that did not say anything that I saw about “low birth rate” in those countries being about religion or lack of religion being a cause. Apparently that is just an assertion that you came up with that you did not provide a link to support.Can Guy produce a substantive rebuttal, or will it be more arm waving?
1) You seem to think that any deviation from what we have generally evolved to do is a “disorder”. That is wrong. As I said before, we have evolved to eat too much sugar. Those humans who refrain from eating too much sugar, do not have a disorder. As those humans who refrain from superstition, also, do not have a disorder.We didn't evolve to eat too much anything, but some people do for a variety of reasons.
2) I say that we did not evolve to be religious. Rather, we evolved to be social AND we evolved to be superstitious. That combination can tend to wind up as religiosity of some sort. However, as humans, we also evolved meta-thinking abilities such that we can understand that our superstitions are false beliefs. So we don’t have to maintain our superstitions, if we are able to think adequately.The consensus is that we likely did evolve to be religious.
The two links, you gave, are long studies that did not say anything that I saw about “low birth rate” in those countries being about religion or lack of religion being a cause. Apparently that is just an assertion that you came up with that you did not provide a link to support.I said there is a connection between loss of faith and societal decline -- not that loss of faith causes the decline. Its probably the other way around.
Also, those societies are not going extinct, I suspect that when their contingencies change sufficiently, they will start pumping out baby humans again. And I don’t think they will need to become religious to do so.Being below TFR means going extinct. Their contingencies are perfect for them to reproduce, but they simply aren't doing it.
Oh, yeah, on the Europeans. You’ve noticed that the Catholics from Central America and Muslims from the Middle East are flocking to these places that you are say are shrinking, right? Why is that? Could it be they want what’s there? Lots of dynamics I know, some of them kind of convoluted, like how the rich nations exploited them to get where they are, but now they want the stuff. Well, it’s kind of their’s in a way, partly. The question is not which country is better or which belief system, it’s how can we take the best of each and make a sustainable, peaceful world.Immigrants are coming to the developed world because we need their young to support our geriatric W.E.I.R.D. societies. If we had sustainable TFR we would just tell them "sorry, we're full". They aren't coming because they love it here.