Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

JS, your posts are appallingly unengaging.

Quote from: ersi on 2014-04-10, 16:56:00

And to help you with quoting. When you select some text and press Quick-Quote, the quote will be thrown into the Quick Reply box at the bottom of the page, but the Quick Reply box is closed by default, you have to open it by pressing the + on its side. Even when the box is closed, the Quick Quote still silently works.

Although I should point out, the quick quote doesn't do nested quotes properly at this moment.

You mean when you select some text, but the selected text already is a quote from another post, then the Quick Quote button still attributes it as from the person whose Quick Quote button you press, right? I thought it wasn't possible to change this. I thought it would always attribute exactly as from the person who wrote the post whose Quick Quote button you pressed.

Quote from: Colonel Rebel on 2014-04-10, 01:17:43

2. Common sense is not so common apparently, as you cleverly leave out that religion is not inherent in our beings/makeup, rather it is learned.

Actually there are indications that religion is inherent. For example Robespierre, one of the main architects of the gorious heydays of the French Revolution, having slain enough priests, monks and nuns to his taste, made unambiguous moves to institute an alternative religion made up by himself. Another example is Stalin, the supreme leader and father of the peoples of the USSR. Once the Orthodox Church had been pushed basically underground, Stalin's personal cult took quasi-religious forms.

These examples show that religion cannot be eliminated without replacement, which basically means religion is inherent, an inevitable aspect of what it means to be a human. When you try to ignore it or eradicate it, it will come back bugging you in gross shapes.

It's also philosophically meaningful to assume that spirituality in fact is inherent, because it only makes sense to formulate the concept of God in such way that God exists no matter what you think or do or don't. If you think God's existence depends on whether you believe in God or not, or if God needs to be defended against disbelievers, you are not really being spiritual or religious. When God's existence is a transcendent reality independent from our beliefs and proofs, when you see God as a logical inevitability and you perceive it as an inherent necessity to follow through with your spiritual tendencies, then you are really religious.

In any other case you're just talking. For example, have you really proven atheism to yourself so that you are aware of everything it entails and are okay with it? Thought so.

Quote from: Colonel Rebel on 2014-04-10, 01:17:43

3. One arrives at the conclusion that you'll be proving how your "Real God" is not man-made and how the "others" are man-made?

I never saw you as a proof kind of guy, more like an emotion-driven shifter. If you are proof-driven now, then this must have been another conversion. Too much conversion is bad for you.

1. Have you considered that the terms "quasi-religious" and "power-hungry" might be similar for a reason?

2. Assuming is the worst thing one can do, as it can make an ass out of you and me.

On a more serious note, yes, it does indeed make sense to formulate the concept of a deity, as I already mention, religion is learned. Children do not come into this world with an inherent tendency to believe in a deity. Instead, their parent or guarding teaches it to them...

Quote from: Colonel Rebel on 2014-04-10, 22:10:49

1. Have you considered that the terms "quasi-religious" and "power-hungry" might be similar for a reason?

The behaviour may look similar, but the concepts are different because the driving motivation behind them is different. So, they are different for a good reason.

Quote from: Colonel Rebel on 2014-04-10, 22:10:49

2. Assuming is the worst thing one can do, as it can make an ass out of you and me.

On a more serious note, yes, it does indeed make sense to formulate the concept of a deity, as I already mention, religion is learned. Children do not come into this world with an inherent tendency to believe in a deity. Instead, their parent or guarding teaches it to them...

Children are not born religious, true, but they are not born atheist either. They are born clueless of what religion and atheism mean. They learn the distinction and then lean one way or the other. And they don't necessarily grow up to become as their parents. There's a rebel phase in our adolescence where anything may happen. Decent parents' children may turn out as criminal junkies, and drunkards' children may become decent purely as a reaction against parents. Same with the religion too. I, for example, grew up in a country and society where everyone, including my parents, is an atheist. Atheism is the official religion here so to speak, but I always struggled with atheism and materialism intellectually and spiritually already at age 10. Nobody taught me this struggle. Nobody else struggled. Everybody else just let it be. I was completely by myself seeing philosophical problems with atheism and materialism, and it was up to me alone to solve the problems for myself. Nobody showed me the solution.

So, to tell me that religion is learned from parents is the most breathtakingly yawning argument one can make. And it's a bit too easily proven false too, as I did. In fact, your own conversion proves you wrong. Your parents are church-going, right?

Pray tell how my change of stance on the matter, years ago, proves me wrong, please.

How do you support it?

O'k! If 'God' doesn't deny logic, then logically - 'He' doesn't exist.

'God' is a woman, so it should read 'She'

If the four men were monks and the woman a nun, it would be a funny joke.

So, I’m an atheist blogger and a professional philosopher. So this puts me in the unenviable position of having to deal with ignorant atheists who not only disparage philosophy but disparage sophisticated theology without understanding it. And honestly it makes me wince sometimes. I believe we can do better. We can make better arguments that address Christians’ real positions, rather than beat up on straw man versions of their arguments.

And it’s important to note that Christians don’t believe in such silly and absurd things like that God is a man in the sky with a beard. I used to be a devout Christian and I never thought any such silly thing. God is ineffable. God cannot be material. God cannot, as sophisticated theology and philosophy teaches us, be “a” being at all. God is, rather than ineffable ground of all being or Being Itself. God is that from which all other beings derive their essence and that by which they are instantiated in reality. To call Him merely “a” being would be absurd since that would imply He was just one of the beings rather than that inexplicable, self-existence in which, and through which, all those beings have their being.