Messages

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SSH: It's certainly nice of churches to also do good. But don't you think all the money and manpower would be better spent on secular charities that mainly aim to do good and focus on the points the churches "also do", without all the religious hogwash and the ever-present lurking risk of fundamentalism?

Also... if it's the institution that counts, not the faith itself... why not engineer a new religion whole-cloth, one without the 'risky' texts? It will be just as non-falsifiable as the current one, but have the added benefit of ideological and doctrinal streamlining. You know, sort of what Plato advocated. There are theories around that the Christian religion, for example, actually is a type of noble lie - a set of instructions to get people to fall in line, so civilisation can blossom. Supernatural threats are very convenient, because they can be very scary to people and you hardly need any effort to keep the pressure up... well, until the scientific method comes around.



Dualnames: Wow, you would believe the island story if I was any charismatic? I have a few local bridges to sell to you, then. But thanks for illustrating how people's thought works on those issues. I'd say if there was no evidence for something and it wasn't neccessary to explain the observed phenomenons, you could just slash the proposition. That's what Atheists do.

And of course I would bother to answer you. You'd have obviously been misinformed in that case, and it's quite worth clearing up. (Although my actual haircolor is sort of hard to pinpoint, as it hovers somewhere between blonde and brown).

The bloody point, is even if God exists, due to the incompetence of humans to understand something, it has been misinterpreted. You cannot be aware that your knowledge about God is so little, yet you seem to think you have enough to prove he doesn't exist. Or the other way around.

You cannot possibly argue about light speed without ever knowing the subject can you? No, because you would appear to be as a fool. The reason why none of you trying to prove of his inexistence and existence, seem to be a fool, is because all of you seem fools, therefore there's is no difference.

In related news, I'd like to inform you that there is a floating island right over you home right now. You may not have noticed it, but that's because of your incompetence to understand it. It is invisible, has no measurable effect on its environment and is not neccessary to explain any natural phenomenon, but I assure you it is there, because it says so in a book that's several thousand years old and shows obvious signs of having been edited a lot during its history.

You cannot possibly argue about the physics of floating islands without knowing anything about the subject, can you? No because that makes you look like a fool! Now live by the arbitrary and vague rules I claim the inhabitants of the island set forth, or they'll torture you for all eternity.

Seriously, "ARGUING ABOUT IT IS FOOLISH BECAUSE I DECLARE IT TO BE ABOVE HUMAN REASON" is the end of research and reason, and the weakest argument I heard so far in this thread. (Narrowly beating "your mom").

/EDIT: Wait, I think I've actually moved from Weak Agnosticism to Just Barely Agnostic Form Of Atheism in the course of this thread. Darn you, discussions.

This intellectual "flatness" is indeed a problem, I agree with you there. It's sad how little people think about this topic, opting to adopt beliefs from their environment instead.

You focus more on the humanitarian aspects, and that's very noble of you. Keep in mind that not everybody may think so. Religion can do good in theory, but unfortunately, it can also be usher in / be used as a justification for a dictatorship.

C'mon Akatosh, after pages and pages of this topic you still only read what you want!
The Bible was written (specially the old testament) within a world that was politically very different from today.
Relax, nobody will ask you to go and fight the crusades.
You are free to let people be.

That it was, and luckily, nobody does. (For everybody involved, I'd be a terrible soldier  ). I'm just saying that we need to be careful; the texts are still there, even if you'd like to ignore them, and as discussed earlier, it's not like they couldn't be constructed to command intolerance anymore. Fundamentalism in the Catholic Church is all but dead. Look at the Pius Brotherhood, for example. Freaky.

It's certainly a sin, as the Bible commands you to spread the religion.

No, because then you're going to hell for not spreading the gospel. Note that this does not count as a selfless act and is not torture-deductible.

Feel the love.

In my version..... UR MOM!

:o

* is slain *

Seriously, though, great argument there.

And in my version, you're confusing the flickering of the projector for smoke, ignoring that the fire can be neither heard nor smelt in addition to being appearantly invisible. I think the analogy just breaks down at this point. 

Keep in mind that it's a theatre that shows no obvious signs of fire, and that you apperantly can't explain to the skeptics why you think it's burning despite absence of evidence, and that there are other people like you around who claim similar things but urge people to take completly different exit routes.

It's not really the best of analogies. Also, do I smell a hint of Pascal's Wager here? 

... despite not being able to procure compelling evidence when asked?

But now you're dodging the question. You said its only a problem when people trying to spread the beliefs are pushy. Who decides when they get too pushy? Can we agree that not allowing them to talk about their faith at all is too restrictive and letting them torture people is too pushy. Where in between those extremes is the allowable line in your opinion? What about door-to-door evangelism? Handing out tracts? TV advertising?

Ok, have a personal definition: If you ask somebody to stop trying to convert you and they don't, if you try to suppress differing viewpoints (as opposed to debating them) or if you try to force people into believing (as opposed to lying out the facts and letting them decide themselves), you're being pushy. Ads are annoying, but I'm ok with those, as you can always just walk away, for example. As are tracts, and people handing out fliers. It depends for door-to-door preachers; if they stay away when you tell them to, they're fair play.

So why are you bothering arguing with me?

Stupidity? I mean, I debate religion on the interwobs.

Anyway. There's a difference between trying to show people the flaws in their beliefs and trying to take them away. See below.

No, that's not what I meant at all. (also, inefficient means somethign different to ineffective ) You said that you would never try and force me to stop beleiving. So the difference with tryign to persuade me with arguments and forcing me is simply the effuicay (100% versus, say, 0.1%)

Let's take an example where your words are so persuasive that anyone you decide to convince to agree with you would do so without any pain or suffering on their part. Would you then go round convincing everyone that you are right. You're still forcing them whether there is pain involved or not.

As I tried to explain, I am not trying to get you to stop believing. What I'm trying to do is to show up flaws in your philosophy - you know, making the implications clear, poking at things that don't quite match, examining the inconsistencies and so on. The conclusion you draw is up to you; you can try to patch the holes as best as possible and fall back on "well, you just gotta belief", or you can pick up a different philosophy. It's up to you.

Sorry if I got "ineffective" and "inefficient" mixed up. But isn't the former just sort of an extreme version of the latter?

[make]

You're still dodging the question. If you could, hypothetically speaking, force a person to believe... would you do it?

No. There, undodged.

Alright, thank you. That's a relief to hear. However...

Who gets to draw the line and where?

Unbelief endangers souls, after all! Shoudn't you take active steps to prevent it from spreading, by, say, outlawing the expression of different viewpoints? Why tolerate Atheism? Why allow freedom of opinion to those others? And if you allow your neighbor to go to hell by not doing literally everything you can to make them believe... isn't that against "loving thy neighbor"?

With the right mindset, it's a very slippery slope from "you should push your belief" to "you should be enforcing your belief". Once again, read those anti-tolerance tracts on occasion. They're chilling.

Now, if you could force people to STOP believing woudl you do it?

No, why would I? You are the guys who assign an intrinisic value to buying into your philosphy, not we. To an Atheist, it doesn't matter if you die a believer or not - so you can belief in whatever you want, as long as you don't try to enforce your belief on others. We don't mind the believing - we only mind the intolerance. It's different with religion.

Is either of us trying to persuade the other only allowable becuase of its inefficacy?

So you complain that trying to convince people with arguments is inefficient? That... strikes me as rather worrying again. Argumenting on a rational basis should be the single and only way used to convince people, plain and simple.

You're still dodging the question. If you could, hypothetically speaking, force a person to believe... would you do it?
(It's not that unlikely, by the way... brainwashing can do scary stuff to you, and the methods are getting more and more refined.)

Also, thanks for pointing out a logical problem with the concept of omnipotence.

... that means that if you were convinced you could brainwash people into believing, you would do it? Let's assume a new method of torture was devised. It inflicts excruciating pain and totally breaks a person's will, to the point that you can directly mold their personality, their morals and their beliefs. This is not just a protective reflex, and the person cannot fake it - you truly alter their 'soul', for lack of a better term. By your logic, you would have a moral obligation to use it on unbelievers.

Read Calvin's anti-tolerance writings on occasion; you'll be amazed by how much his initial thoughts mirror yours.

Ladies and gentlemen, feel the Christian love.

Lionmonkey: Notice Khris comma placement - it's really important here. He did not say "He could not have done that, as he is an Atheist." - you would be rightly shocked by this position, as it's just plain silly to claim that belonging to a certain philosophy makes you downright saintly. What he said was "This action was not caused by his Atheism.", and he is right with that. Absence of belief in an idea does not, in itself, cause people to take actions.

Oh, and I never claimed you claimed you had that education. I just wanted to point out that you made a really, really basic mistake there, and that it's probably not a good idea to debate using terms of formal logic without really knowing how it works.

SSH: The problem is not that people try to spread their religion. The problem is when they get pushy. If you follow that idea to its logical conclusion... isn't it better to push down unbelievers, to make their life a living hell, to torture, brainwash and break them until they believe? After all, as atrocious as this is, you are saving them from eternal hellfire...

/EDIT: Also, we just broke 800 posts. Go us?

Well, first of all, I wouldn't put the line with Char inside the function. You can just call it like this...

Code: ags

wackCheck(Random(1));

...meaning you could remove this line...

Code: ags

Char = Random(1); // I have two characters at the moment and need them to randomly appear

Otherwise, I could see no reason why the code shouldn't work. Are you sure cDaniel is character number 1? If yes, how often have you tested the whole thing? The random number generator can screw you over on occasion.

Darn ninjas.

/EDIT: Oh, and just for the laughs - here's a vastly shortened version that should do the same.

Code: ags

function wackCheck(int Char) {
  spot = IntToFloat(Random(3));
  character[Char].x = FloatToInt(154.33*Maths.RaiseToPower(spot, 3.0) - 769.0*Maths.RaiseToPower(spot, 2.0)+ 1002.67*spot + 60.0);
  character[Char].y = FloatToInt( 22.67*Maths.RaiseToPower(spot, 3.0) -   3.5*Maths.RaiseToPower(spot, 2.0)- 163.167*spot +287.0);
  character[Char].Transparency = 0;
  character[1-Char].Transparency = 100; //only works as long as you have exactly two characters
  SetTimer(2, 80); //Reset timer
}

You can also address characters via a numbered array. As in,

Code: ags

function wackCheck(int charnumber) { // something has to go in the parenthesis.
  spot = Random(3); // spot is defined in the global script header as it's used in rooms as well as the global script
  
    if (spot == 0) {
    character[charnumber].x = 60;
    character[charnumber].y = 287;
  }
    else if (spot == 1) {
      character[charnumber].x = 448;
      character[charnumber].y = 143;
    }
    else if (spot == 2) {
      character[charnumber].x = 224;
      character[charnumber].y = 128;
    }
    else {
      character[charnumber].x = 314;
      character[charnumber].y = 378;
    }
    character[charnumber].Transparency = 0;
}

Note that this is not the only - or most elegant - way to do this by far, but it will certainly work.

NEXT: Hitler vs Godwin: Ultimate Showdown!!

The pages seem to sort of bend outward, but apart from that, the GUI looks pretty nice to me.

Alright, I am by no means qualified to speak on Khris' behalf, and he sort of implied some of 'em in his posts, but there are some things worth restating for clarification's sake.

1) Disliking a belief =/= Hating the believers. I'm friends with a very devout Catholic, for example, who is a really nice person when he's not pushing his beliefs (which, thankfully enough, he seldomly does). I disagree with him on pretty much every political and most philosophical points, but we still get along. Yeah, I know, anecdotal evidence, but you hopefully get my point.

2) I think you're over-reacting a bit, miguel. Khris has admittedly been a little unsubtle with his usage of language, but that just sort of happens in emotionally charged debates like this one. Recall when you claimed I hated the church when I posted an example of how Christian beliefs can sometimes go wrong? Calm down a bit, dude. Khris is not arguing for an abolishment of freedom of religion; he's just stating his opinion and poking around the arguments you brought forth. Skepticism, remember?

3) As Khris said, "You are wrong because you are an idiot" =/= "You have said something stupid, then insisted on it to be right when it was pointed out to be stupid, which is rather idiotic". The former is an ad hominem. The latter could be nicer, but it's not a logical fallacy.

4) Bluntness is not hatred.

Akatosh, thanks for backing me up on this.

You're quite welcome.