Christianity is a scam. like all other religions.

Wow, brucben, so you know about all religions, do you? That must have taken lifetimes of study. ;-)

Nigee and Mario, the rapture is the snatching up of Christians.

In fact, the rapture is referred to in today's Bible reading thread, Luke Chapter 18, verses 34-35:
34 That night two people will be asleep in one bed; one will be taken, the other left. 35 Two women will be grinding flour together at the mill; one will be taken, the other left.

@ mafia ''I was having a bit of trouble finding a way to express myself and it ended up turning into a really, really, really, really long essay that would even make obiwan say dude tl;dr. I got halfway through and couldn't be bothered to finish. Sorry.''

I hope you don't mind, but this put me in mind of this remark by Rutherford:
''A theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good.''

You know the guy, he also said:
That which is not measurable is not science.

thanks anyway.

Wow, Rutherford said that. Well he's always right about everything so I guess I'm a theist now.

To be fair it wouldn't be that long if I were explaining it to someone other than you. But because it's you I felt the need to include about 40 billion caveats and clarifications and qualifications about what I was saying and what I was emphatically not saying so that you wouldn't misinterpret or misrepresent my point. It's not that it's that complicated to explain in the normal course of events, I've just learned my lesson about how to debate with you.

@ Mafia yeah right, what a shame.

Fine, I'll make an attempt and I'll try and keep it brief, so then you can distort my point, claim I'm making an argument I'm not making and then shoot down that point. Enjoy!

Humans evolved to live in groups. I believe this is an uncontroversial point. As such we developed strategies for living in groups. Among those strategies was an ability to think about and understand morality. Tigers don't have a sense of right and wrong, that is fairly unique to us. (Though there are other animals who also display some semblance of that as well, but that's neither here nor there.) If we're going to live in large groups we need to understand how to behave around one another, however humans also developed the capability for abstract thought, which, coupled with this allows us to extrapolate morality beyond mere survival strategies for how to treat one another. Now the fact is, even if the ability to think about morals is innate, specifically the content of what those morals are can be highly variable. Throughout time human beings have developed many different codes of morality, which have had some similarities and some differences to one another, and which often reflect the structure and needs of the society in which they were developed. This would seem to indicate that rather than being innate, morals which appear in more than one different moral code worldwide are just the sort of morals which serve to preserve a society of nearly any form. Now this means there is also a lot of historical accident in the development of morality as well.
Now as for how this applies to the modern world, and a naturalist worldview. Well, for a naturalist there is no greater power to be served by worrying about morality, so there has to be something real, something I know exists. What about myself, I know I exist and I know what I want from morality. I want not to be harmed, I want to be allowed to pursue life as I see fit without imposition from other people (in so far as doing so does not cause harm to others). I live in a society that has a code of morality that governs how people behave. But as a member of that society I also have the power to influence what that code of morality is, particularly if I join a larger movement of people with the same goals (ie. the secular humanist movement, given that I'm also an atheist as a result of my naturalist worldview, it's a very good fit). So now we have a movement of people which uses the harm principle and the central tenet of "don't impose arbitrary morals on others" as the guiding principles of morality, and fight to bring overall social morality in line with that, because that's how I would like to be treated, and as a result how I would like to treat other people.
Does that make sense? This view differs from Dawkinsian reciprocal altruism in that I'm not arguing it's a biologically evolved response (or not entirely).

That being said, I do think that reciprocal altruism fails in some ways to explain ALL of morality, but it's also not as unscientific as you claim. It is absolutely backed up by some evidence and there are cases where this idea really does seem to be at play.

@ Putin

"See, Mujus is just another cute cuddly Christian, accusing people of devil worship"

He didn't say you were a devil worshipper; he said you were a liar, lol.

@Putin

Just curious, it's not my point at all, but what was your take on getting thrown under the bus by the secular humanists? Apparently you're not an atheist , you are a member of a State Religion. I don't believe that, but it was interesting.

AverageWhiteBoy stated:

"'...the Stalins and Maos of the world do the same because they see their people as nothing more than meaty fuel to be ground up to feed the machinery of The State.'

That's what happens when you've got a state religion, which is what Stalinist Marxism was."


Is Marxism a state religion?

Marxism is a political philosophy. STALINIST Marxism was a state religion.

Arkansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas all have clauses in their state constitutions prohibiting atheists from holding public office. They're unenforceable under Article 6, Section 3 of the national Constitution, but Arkansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas still seem intent on making a statement.

So how about Leninist Marxism? is that a religion?

What exactly makes Stalinist Marxism a religion? It seems a bit convenient. You didn't say that merely to disavow cruel tyrants that happen to be atheists and still be able to point a finger at cruel ttyrants who happened to be Christians. As I said nobody kills merely because they believe God exists. Likewise nobody kills merely because they do not believe God exists. Both groups kill because they ascribe to a doctrine that support the idea of killing others.



Also, so what? There are states making asses of themselves keeping an unconstitutional clause on the books that they'll never try to enforce because, as you said it's unenforceable. I'm sure that's not the only time a group of state legislators have made asses of themselves. In fact I used to work in my state's legislature; I'm quite sure of it, lol.

One thing should be telling about that, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida do not. Assuming that your

Let me be clear, I do not support anyone being barred from office because of their beliefs. I just don't see those state's "statements" amounting to more than "Hey Look! We're idiots, in this regard".

"Marxism is a political philosophy. STALINIST Marxism was a state religion. "

I hope you mean in some kind of metaphorical sense and not literally. That is, in the same way that some would say baseball is a religion. Because Stalinism is clearly not a religion.

Stalinism is a meaningless epithet that Trotskyites and anti-communists invented to try and attack socialism with. Stalin was a Marxist-Leninist to the core, he did not invent a new theory. To attack "Stalinism" is to attack Marxism-Leninism. Leftish types who constantly bash "Stalinism" think socialism is some kind of tea party that occurs in some kind of airy fairy way through magic pixie dust, not through hard work and discipline. They don't approve of any revolution anywhere, so their bashing 'Stalinism' is meaningless. I have no use for the backstabbing criticism among the oppositionist left.

"Is Marxism a state religion?"

Marxism, or "STALINIST MARXISM" since we must use all caps, is again, a meaningless epithet. Anybody who thinks you can separate Marxism from Leninism, and Stalin from Lenin, is some social democratic poseur who never read any Marx, or at least never bothered to understand how Marx envisioned socialism coming about.

I don't get how Marxism Leninism is a 'state religion', if religion is to have any meaning whatsoever. I suppose 'religion' has been transformed by trendy post-structuralist nihilists to mean 'ideology'. Ideology is much different than religion. Having a coherent belief system and an ethos is not a religion. Religion is metaphysical, involves some connection with the supernatural. Marxism-Leninism is as areligious as you can get. Stalin never wanted credit for anything. The reason why he was so successfully demonized is because he wasn't an egomaniac who spent 90% of his life writing his autobiography and other nonsense (ahem, Trotsky). He was a humble workaholic who dedicated every waking moment to the hard work of building a socialist state. How is he the center of a 'religion'?

Humble workaholic = taking control of everything, starving the population, slaughtering dissenters, etc.

Starving the population? No you're confusing the USSR with British controlled India. Not that you care about starving people in capitalist countries. The Soviet Union's collectivization programme was about feeding people (especially its rapidly growing urban population), not starving them. But nevermind, why bother with you. Regurgitating Goebbels talking points as if they were insightful.

"taking control of everything"

ROFL, right. He offered to resign from his post several times, including at the height of the fiasco with the Trotskyites. His request was denied. Nearly a thousand Politburo decisions were made without Stalin ever participating in the decisions. Many important decisions were made which Stalin disagreed with. The USSR's Politburo was far more democratic and collaborative than any western cabinet.

Keeping it simple if Jesus were alive today would he be on a gaming website copying bits from hiis favourite Bible ....... I hope not !!
The God-pretenders on this site are about as close to Jesus as I am to astral flying.
I do know great people who are religious and try to live an honest, humble and respectful life and they do more for me in advancing Christian values than people shouting their mouths off on this forum. Some people use their belief as a `weapon to beat us down, but you can see on this site that bullshit walks...... if you want to pedal insanity start with the insane, you may be able to bring them back from the brink when they realise how nuts you are.

Mario4ever you are exactly right. Stalin ruled with an iron hand and everyone in the rubber stamp Politburo knew that he could and would order their summary execution on his whim. Nothing was done in the Soviet Union from 1928 forward that Stalin disagreed with.
The millions of Ukrainians starved by Stalin in the Holodomor stand as testament to his boundless inhumanity and genocide.

Stalinist Marxism was a messianic complex with Joseph Stalin as its core. Stalin wasn't viewed as a supernatural God, but his word and wishes were treated as the word and wishes of a God who could strike down anyone anywhere at anytime with his furious wrath.

There are many motivations for people to deny the genocide of Stalin and the failure of Marxism in the Soviet Union. Their world view collapses in the face of the truth about Stalin, Marxism and the failure of the Soviet Union, and without that world view they simply can't deal reality. They have utterly nothing to lose by the most fraudulent denials, and everything to lose by acknowledging the truth. They depend on conspiracy theories that they claim are true because these theories aren't proven wrong. They depend on character assassination because they can't depend on facts. They fabricate evidence because of the irrefutable mountain of evidence against them. They claim the Holodomor was faked, exaggerated, and the deaths that did occur were due to cyclical poor harvests and vast conspiracies aimed at discrediting or toppling the Soviet Union. The problem for deniers of course is the isolation they create for themselves because once they dig the hole they become isolated and can't escape it. They simply raise their voices louder and louder and create larger and larger fabrications.

Also @ fulhamish, the concept of reciprocal altruism is absolutely falsifiable. Look for a species that engages in an altruistic behaviour. First see if that behaviour is repeated in a reciprocal way through the species. Bear in mind that parent-child altruism, or other forms of close family altruism, in species that keep track of things like that, don't count (because there's another explanation for that kind of behaviour). If the behaviour does appear to be reciprocated, examine the net cost of the behaviour to the animal, and measure it against the net benefit to the animal of the behaviour when it is returned. If you find that the net cost to the animal of the altruistic behaviour outweighs the net benefit to the animal of the behaviour when reciprocated, and yet the behaviour flourishes, that would serve as evidence against the idea of reciprocal altruism as an evolutionary adaptation.

Emac, that was a great description of how deniers operate. I would have said that Putin was completely crazy and left it at that, but you took the trouble of giving an explanation to the uninformed. Cool!

Has thucy started selling cage match tix yet? I can't be bothered reading through this thread. So if he hasn't...

ATHEISM VS CHRISTIANITY
CAGE MATCH
GET TIX HERE - $5.00

You should read the threas Shock, it should more acurrately read

Atheist vs. Atheist Cage match

Sorry, did some vapid thug from the Cult of Hayek just claim that Marxism had a messianic complex? LOL.

See you need to bash Stalin because he succeeded. You need to attack the achievements of somebody who industrialized a massive country in record time, and defeated your pal Hitler. You need to attack the achievements of any alternative to your warmongering, plundering, pillaging economic system that worships greed and exploitation. So Stalin must go. And any Hitlerian propaganda used to attack him is perfectly fine. You'll even hilariously quote a guy who wanted all Jews to die in order to whine about the 'human rights abuses' of the USSR. ROFL.