Warp wrote:
>   What I'm talking about is that whenever atheists attack the bible, they
> seem to assume there exists an universal moral code accepted by the
> majority, and then they proceed to show how the bible breaks this universal
> moral code.

Atheists aren't attacking the bible: how is your argument going to affect a 
book?

They're attacking the belief that the bible applies to those who choose not 
to believe it. Those who try to apply the bible's morality to those who 
don't believe it are exactly those people who believe it's a universal moral 
code.

>   That's a shaky premise because there is no such a thing as a universal
> moral code accepted by the majority.

But many people believe there is, and many people believe they know what it 
is, in spite of the fact that many of those people disagree with each other.

>   For example, some people think that abortion is genocide, while other
> people think it's acceptable. Whose moral code is the correct one here?

MINE!

> Whichever you choose, are you going to tell the others that their moral
> code is wrong?

Not only are you going to tell them it's wrong, you're going to MURDER THOSE 
PEOPLE who you believe is wrong.  You're also going to lobby to prevent 
life-saving medical research from being carried out because you erroneously 
think your holy book says it's evil.

>   Americans who advocate the death penalty have their own moral code about
> that subject. Is their moral code wrong? Why?

You're missing the point.

>   There is no such thing as a "universal moral code". You can't argue that
> something in the bible is universally "wrong" because there is no such
> universal measure of what is right or wrong.

And if every Christian agreed that the moral code in the bible wasn't 
universal, we'd not be having this coversation.

One problem with monotheism is that it leads to the presumption that since 
there's only one god, its opinions apply even to those who don't worship it.

If you're a Christian that rejects any of the following premises, then you 
don't really need to be watching atheist videos:

1) There's exactly one God;
2) It's the God described by your Holy book;
3) That God created the universe;
4) That act of creation gives that God the authority
    to tell humans how to live their lives;
5) Your holy book gives an accurate description of
    what that God wants all humans to do;
6) Your interpretation of that holy book is correct;
7) Your holy book authorizes you to enforce your God's will.

As soon as you are open to the idea you might not agree with all of those 
principles, then you're not the kind of religious fanatic that outspoken 
atheists try to discredit.

I have never, ever seen an atheist screed against Quakers, Amish, or any 
other very Christian sect that says "leave other people alone."  If you know 
of one, let me know.

>> And yet, that's exactly what Jesus tells people in the Bible, and that's the 
>> excuse some crazy people use for killing their children.
> 
>   Jesus also tells people that their prayers don't get answered because
> they don't have faith. The message seems clear to me: God does not answer
> all prayers.

He doesn't answer the prayers of the unfaithful. If you're willing to starve 
your child to death because you have the assurance that Jesus will resurrect 
him, I'm pretty sure you have faith.

See, I'm explaining that the video is addressed to the religious fanatics 
who think God talks to them daily and if he doesn't talk to you, you're 
going to burn in hell for eternity, and that it's their job to help you get 
there. You're arguing "not all Christians are like that."  Sure.

>   Well, they clearly don't want to discuss, they clearly don't want to
> listen nor hear any answers. Their attitude is "whatever you say, you are
> just rationalizing". In other words, they are simply and purely being
> provocative.

No, I honestly think it's more like "we've heard all 2000 answers to this, 
and they're all full of crap, and if you think about your answer, you'll see 
why it's likely full of crap."  It's not like the same arguments aren't on 
interactive forums also.

>   In other words, they are trolling.

The preemptive dismissal is indeed assuming that you're not going to come up 
with a valid counterargument.

In the sense that you can't really answer a video, yes.

>> The Bible has God promoting genocide, slavery, mass slaughter of 
>> infants, rape, etc.
> 
>   That's a pure straw man.
> 
>   If a history book tells us that the president of the US ordered a nuclear
> bomb to be dropped in Japan, does that imply that this history book is
> promoting genocide? Of course not. It's simply stating what happened. It's
> not promoting anything.
> 
>   If the bible says that God told some people to get rid of some nation,
> is it promoting genocide? No, it's only stating that God told those people
> to get rid of that nation.

Wait. So if God tells his chosen people to go to a country, murder everyone 
but the young virgins (including women, infants, the infirm, etc), and then 
take the young virgins home as slaves...  Is that moral? Or is that immoral? 
Is God telling you to do something good?

> It's not giving permission for the readers to
> go and murder someone. 

And phrases like "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" are indeed giving 
permission for the readers to go murder someone, yes?

> You might completely disagree with the *reasons*
> stated in that passage why God gave this order, but that's not related to
> whether the passage *promotes* doing it again and again.

I don't think you're getting the point of the argument.

If God's will is by definition good, then sometimes genocide, rape, and 
murder of infants (like the first born sons of every family in an entire 
country) are sometimes good.

The point is to point out to intelligent people "hey, are you really saying 
that genocide and infantcide is sometimes OK?  Would you really go murder an 
entire country full of people if your God told you to?"

>   Nobody has the right to say "hey, this passage tells about killing
> people, thus I can go there and kill those people" because that's not
> what the passage is telling. It's not giving permission to anybody to
> do any such thing.

It's giving permission to the historical people to do that historical act. 
The act itself is either good or evil. You must admit that God either 
ordered something evil to be done, or that genocide is OK if God says to do it.

Then you have to ask yourself "is genocide really OK, ever?  Would I 
actually participate in dashing the brains of infants against rocks if my 
God told me to, and said 'you don't understand why, but do it anyway.'"

>   Of course some people will interpret such passages as they please, but
> the bible is not the only text being abused like that, nor does being abused
> tell anything about the veracity of the text.

Correct. That's why there's someone imploring intelligent people not to be 
dicks and interpret things that way.

>   You can ask "but *why* did God order killing those people?" That's a
> different, theologically interesting question. You can disagree with any
> answers if you want, but it still doesn't say anything about the existence
> of God or the veracity of the text.

That God ordered the genocide is presuming the existence of God. The video 
is asking you to consider what the logical rational implication is of 
accepting that portion of the bible to be true.

> 
>> Why is that good? Is it good because God does it? If 
>> not, isn't God doing bad? Or are you in agreement that slavery and genocide 
>> *can* be good?
> 
>> That last seems to be what you're arguing with your ice cream analogy.
> 
>   You are now misinterpreting *my* writing. I didn't say that it's good.

You said that believing the more wise father and avoiding the ice cream you 
want is good, yes? Or am I misunderstanding that?

The isomorphic mapping would be that committing genocide and rape when 
instructed to do so by your God is good, even if you don't understand why.

> I said that perhaps it's that we don't understand now what's going on
> because we don't have all the info nor the necessary intellect and
> experience. Just like the child may be unable to understand why he is
> being denied things.

Certainly. Doesn't that argument lead towards the conclusion that everything 
God commands is good? Or are you willing to admit that God may order people 
to do evil things, and you have no way of knowing whether his orders are 
good or evil?

I don't really see a fourth possibility:
1) Everything God orders you to do is good, including the things like
    widespread genocide, infantcide, rape, even if you don't understand it.
    This seems to imply that genocide, slavery, murder, human sacrifice,
    etc is not necessarily immoral.
2) God may order you to do evil things, and you'd not know whether it's
    evil or not. This means God sometimes wants you to do evil things at
    his bequest, meaning he's not 100% good.
3) God may tell you to do something evil, and you know it's evil.
    Conclusion: You probably shouldn't do it anyway, and if you do,
    it's because you're afraid of the giant bully who will punish
    you again forever for disobeying his evil instructions.
4) God is fictional.

Am I missing a possibility?

And (as an aside) if we can't understand why it's good or evil, why were 
humans kicked out of the garden of eden after eating from the tree of 
knowledge of good and evil and becoming like god in that respect? :-)

>   Those well-known arguments have their answers, which atheists simply refuse
> to listen to, or consider in any way acceptable. 

I've never really seen a reasonable answer to most questions. At some point, 
one has to simply accept there are different premises at work, different 
axioms, and no amount of rational argument will argue people out of 
positions found via irrationality.

>   Some of the questions are truely complex and difficult. However, most of
> the questions are trivial and have completely simple answers to them.

Yes, and usually that answer is "God is fictional."  :-)  I've looked at a 
lot of these things, talked for tens of hours to deeply religious and highly 
trained ministers and such, and I've never found an answer to these 
questions that aren't trite.

> However, a bit like conspiracy theorists, they refuse to let go even of
> the most ridiculous questions.

Oh come on. You watch Ray Comfort convincing you God exists because the 
banana is curved and changes colors when it ripens, and you think *atheists* 
have ridiculous questions?

>   (Often they also choose the most ridiculous and misguided answers out
> there, just to make fun of them and ridicule them. That is, to make straw
> men out of them.)

No, it's more like the most ridiculous and misguided answers are the most 
dangerous. The people who are moderate don't get any time because there's no 
need.

>   Still doesn't say anything about the existence of God (which is the core
> point of the video).

Depends. Which God. Your God? Or the God of the people who think everything 
in the bible is literally true?

>>> Of course you have to understand that it *is* a
>>> metaphor, and what it is trying to say. (Naturally different people may
>>> have different interpretations, which is why we have a myriad of different
>>> churches, branches, sects and whatnot.)
> 
>> A myriad of different churches, branches, sects, explosions of airplanes, 
>> murders of abortion doctors, and beheadings of apostates.
> 
>   Still not the point of the video.

Yes it is. It's just poorly expressed, probably due to time constraints.

>> Then you're not the type of person this video is addressed to. :-)
>   Its straw men about what the bible is saying just bother me a lot.

It's really not. It's what many of the religious fanatics here actually 
claim the bible says. You're taking your interpretation of the bible, and it 
doesn't match up with what the video is arguing, because the video is 
arguing with someone else's interpretation of the bible.

Given that every sect and really every person interprets the bible 
differently, it's impossible to make a video arguing about the bible that 
many people won't think is arguing against points not made in the bible.

If you think Genesis is a metaphor, then anyone arguing against a 6-day 
creation is "attacking a straw-man."  But then you go to places like the 
Genesis Museum, or the Texas school board, trying to prevent biology 
students from learning about evolution, and you realize it's not a straw 
man; you're just already convinced.

> That's why I wrote them that open letter. (And in fact, I got a polite
> response from the website admin.)

Yep.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Chambers wrote:
> Personally, I don't think the government should have anything to do with 
> marriage.

No, this wouldn't be right. If I'm hurt and unconscious, someone has to make 
a decision about what to do. If I die without a will, someone has to make a 
decision about who gets the money. There are bunches and bunches of 
situations where your family is the "default" in cases where you can't make 
the choice yourself.

People in my family get to drive my cars without paying different insurance. 
  I pay different taxes because I'm married, and my wife can collect my 
savings and other government benefits when necessary. This sort of thing 
*also* goes on all the time, even though arguably that could be a private 
agreement. And even when it's a private matter, the religious raise hell 
when a private corporation decides to (for example) insure gay couples even 
when they're not required to by law.

As soon as you say "you have all the rights, we just won't *call* it 
marriage", then you're opening up to discrimination, including lawsuits 
where a law says "married couples" and it gets enforced as "but not civil 
unions."  "Separate but equal" has been shown to be a bad idea, and I'm 
really kind of surprised that so many blacks here voted for it less than a 
generation after it was applied to *them*.

> Its an entirely religious matter, and the Civil authorities 
> should keep their hands off it.

I disagree. I think most of the people who aren't allowed to marry would be 
happy to actually have all the rights and privileges of a religious marriage 
without the religion.

> Then, if gay people wanted to get married, all they would have to do 
> would be to find a church that allows them to.

And I would bet that the first thing that would happen is the religious 
types would try to get that religion somehow declared improper.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Chambers wrote:
> Then have a quick-n-easy "Next of Kin" specification.  Anything not 
> covered by a will is left to your next of kin and, if they don't claim 
> it, then it goes to the State.

Yeah. We call that "marriage", dude. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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andrel wrote:
> Probably me. I keep hearing stories about various religions being 
> illegal and followers having been prosecuted for convening. It is hard 
> to judge from here, and probably they were indeed trying to overthrow 
> the government.

Apparently, religion is often used as a front. It's quite fine (or so I hear 
from those living there) to practice Falong Gong or whatever it's called, as 
long as you don't say "because you don't recognize our practice, we want to 
overthrow you."  Yet around San Diego, people pass out brochures about all 
the abuses perpetrated against proponents of falong gong.

Of course, it's not like the chinese government never lies or propagandizes. 
But from what I saw when I'm there, most people seem pretty happy with the 
government, and it's the individual abuses that get blown out of proportion 
here.  Not unlike 98% of the cops in the USA are nice and polite and such, 
and it's the 2% who beat the crap out of handcuffed suspects that makes the 
news.

They don't have as much freedom. The government officials are still trying 
to keep the country stable and prosperous. But from everything I hear, 
they're actually working quite hard to keep the majority of chinese citizens 
happy and healthy and prosperous. (Unlike, say, what I hear about Zimbabwe 
and such.) The government just tries to keep people from disrupting the 
government and throwing the whole country back into hundreds or warring 
territories.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Warp wrote:
>   But that's petitio principii: They start with the *false* assumption that
> christianity or the bible teaches that God stops believers from divorcing
> each other. There is no such promise anywhere in the bible, nor is it the
> teaching of any mainstrean christian church.

Now, stop and ask yourself how do you know that? Isn't there anything in the 
bible that can be interpreted as "God oversees marriage"?

The video isn't attacking the bible. It's attacking the interpretation of 
the bible that includes "God has something to do with the appropriateness of 
any given marriage". If you don't believe that, you're not the target 
audience. It's not a straw man. It's just an argument you're not making.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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On 5-7-2009 22:45, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> Wasn't that one tested a couple of years ago?
> 
> Yes. Often, actually.
> 
>> With surprising results? 
> 
> Only surprising to the faithful.
> 
>> Anyone can find that reference?
> 
> Feel free. I certainly never saw it.

What I remember is something like this: divide a group of patients into 
3. One group you let recover on their own. One you let pray for but 
don't tell and one that knows that they are prayed for.
IIRC One of the groups that was prayed for did significantly worse*. I 
don't remember exactly which one, I think the group that knew.


* this being regular research probably a cutoff value for P of .05 was 
used. It is a well know fact that using this method one in twenty 
results is wrong. ;)

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> """
>> Just because the same word, "slave", is used, doesn't automatically mean the 
>> situations were comparable.
>> """
>> OK, so you're of the feeling that slavery *can* be good and moral.
> 
>   Assuming you understand what "slavery" means in the bible. It has little
> to do with the slavery that happened eg. in the US in the past.

OK. To me, slavery means "you work for this person, or whoever he tells you 
to work for, and you have no choice and you may not leave."  Note the Bible 
also describes the way in which a slave owner owns the wife the slave 
marries, as well as the children.

Me? I'll take that as universally unacceptable.

>> Now, how 
>> about the genocide, rape and pillage attacks, and murder of thousands of 
>> innocent babies?  :-)
> 
>   How about death penalty in the US? Is it good and moral?

That logical fallacy is called "et tu."  The morality of the US laws don't 
have anything to do with whether killing every first born son in Egypt was 
good or bad. How could it?

>   I don't know your stance on that subject (and you don't have to answer),
> but moral codes are different for different people.

Hence, you're not the person the video is addressed to. Your God isn't the 
one it's saying doesn't exist. You're worshiping some other God, one whose 
morality isn't applicable to everyone in the world by definition.

> If God indeed created us, then he basically
> owns us, and can do whatever he wants with us.

I reject that premise.

Alternately, I accept it *IF* and *ONLY*IF* you leave it up to actual God to 
be doing the whatever. If, on the other hand, you feel it's your job to 
enforce God's will because God owns us, then you are evil and immoral. :-)

>   Also, just because God has the right to do whatever he pleases, that
> doesn't mean *we* also have the right, without his express permission.

Ah, here, you see, we're sliding into evil.

"God created both me and you."  OK, who cares.
"God therefore owns both me and you and can do whatever he wants."
    OK, who cares.
"God has given me express permission to murder you."
    OK, suddenly we're in trouble here.

Yet that's pretty much how the argument goes whenever religious rules get 
enforced. If it actually was *GOD* punishing gay people or abortion doctors 
or whatever, I don't think you'd actually *have* too many atheists about.

>   The "murder of innocent babies" might sound horrible to you, but consider
> these two completely hypothetical situations (assuming God did indeed exist):
> 
>   1) These babies are born to a depraved society where they may be raised
> to hate, rape and kill people. (Usually when the bible tells about the
> eradication of some people, it gives an indication of *why*.)
> 
>   2) These babies go to heaven before seeing or learning anything bad, and
> are happy everafter.
> 
>   Maybe from your point of view situation #1 is preferable, but it might be
> plausible that God considers situation #2 even more preferable, or at least
> not that bad of an alternative.

OK, so your take is that the murder of innocent babies is sometimes good and 
righteous.  That's fine, but it's not a stance many people would take.

You're of the "it must be good, because God approves."  Unfortunately, taken 
to extremes, that turns into "it's Ok for me to do that, because God approves."

>   And no, this still doesn't give anybody permission to murder anybody.

Would you murder someone, if God told you to?  Sadly, there are enough 
people here who do just that that we actually have to pass laws about it 
specifically.

> No person can be the judge of who deserves to live.

Sure we can. Doctors and judges do it all the time, as do politicians and 
soldiers.

>   Do you have any estimate of how much of humanity's history has been lost
> forever? Written history is very fragile and gets destroyed very easily
> (by accidents, by deterioration and by vandalism).

There are *tons* of records from the same time period. Inventories from 
stores, lists of party guests, real estate records, bank records, etc. If 
you're interested, you should take a bit of a look around at resources and 
find one of those that discusses the situation.

We have *lots* of records of Jesus' time.

>   It's not completely implausible that only few records have survived.

It's not implausible. It's just not the case that only a few records have 
survived.

>   I don't want to badmouth the Catholic church here, but suffice to say
> that I don't agree with them, nor consider their intepretations of the
> bible completely correct.

Sure. But that doesn't make the argument a straw man. It just means you 
already agree with the conclusion of the argument because you already 
rejected the premise. The argument wouldn't be a straw man if addressed to 
one of the outraged church members hiring armed guards to protect bread.

>   It doesn't make any sense when it's presented as an argument that God is
> imaginary (rather than that some christians are crazy).

Except that you're not going to convince crazy Christians that their 
interpretations are mistaken. You have to go with "OK, assume everything you 
believe is true. Here's the reasonable consequence. Do you really want to 
believe that consequence? If not, can you rationally explain why not?"

In my experience, the answer is "Yes, that's all true. Yes that's a 
reasonable consequence. No I don't want to believe it. Therefore, it's not a 
reasonable consequence."  Which is why I tend not to have that sort of 
argument any more.


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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andrel wrote:
> IIRC One of the groups that was prayed for did significantly worse*. I 
> don't remember exactly which one, I think the group that knew.

Oh, yes. By "surprising", I thought you meant the prayer actually helped, 
which would be surprising to those doing the experiment.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> If the muslims here were rioting and murdering in the name of Islam here, 
>> I'm sure there would be videos of ten things intelligent muslims need to 
>> address, too. :-)
> 
>   I don't think so. Muslims are rioting in Europe, yet it's forbidden to
> say anything bad about them.

That's why I said "here."   Of course, there are some things out there that 
talk about the evils of islam, calling it a pedophiliac religion and such. 
But since it isn't the muslims *here* attacking the atheists where it's 
still fortunately legal to criticize such attacks, you see fewer videos 
about it.

> In Finland, for example, you can literally
> get jailed if you made such a video about islam. There have been concrete
> cases. 

Why is that? Some bizarre reading of "human rights" or something?

 > (Christianity, on the other hand, is completely free to be bashed.)

I find it hard to understand how to reconcile that, except maybe the way 
that it's common to consider a white person being passed over in favor of a 
black person "affirmative action" but the reverse being "discrimination."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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andrel wrote:
> Like you I noticed that devout christians sometimes change a lot when 
> they study theology. Often the 'God' becomes more abstract and/or their 
> believe becomes more personal or gnostic. That is not strange, but it 
> may result in a gap with the 'lay-man'. I don't have a problem with 
> that, but it may appear hypocritical in certain circumstances.
> As long as we take one another's religion serious and don't try to make 
> fun of what differs from what we believe, there should not be a problem. 
> This video fails pathetically in that respect.

Sigh.. Ok.. So, you want people to take seriously religions that smear 
their gods so thin that their "order/church" becomes little more than a 
title, since their god has been reduced to quantum interference 
patterns? I can certainly tolerate such people a lot more, but taking it 
seriously... And no one that is "serious" about the truth of their faith 
is going to take those people as anything other than just what they are, 
agnostics/atheists who still insist on holding on to some vague belief 
in magic beans.

Fact is, the lay-man doesn't have a problem with such people, other than 
their unfortunate tendency, when confronted with a problem, to circle 
the wagons "around" the Indians (i.e., more radical and literalist 
believers), in order to defend themselves against the settlers...

But, you are right in a sense, its "precisely" why the truly lost ones 
claim everyone "other" than them is a non-believer. Because, its true, 
in a sense. They are the only ones "holding on" to the idea that Thor 
causes thunder, Poseidon didn't like the street festivals in New 
Orleans, Ares is going to show up in 2012 bringing conquest, famine and 
death with him (yeah, the white one is conquest, which is why he has a 
Roman helmet and spear) and Ahriman still plans to plunge the world into 
unending chaos, if Ahura Mazda wasn't around to being universal order 
(even if they now insist on calling the later ones Satan and Jesus).

Like I said, there are no "deeper" issues. Anything internally tends to 
be nitpicking over trivia, and anything they "claim" are huge issues 
when talking to the outside world are the same silly BS Dawkins, et al, 
point out are their only, and failed, arguments.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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