Religious Dialogue

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What's a miracle is that you actually believe that. It jumps from subject to subject, like a drug addict having too many thoughts at once, and is often quite obscure.

dag, told ya it was shrooms. also you're wrong, the quran is one of the best books i've ever read. it beats lord of the rings easily.

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I was reading and interpreting it the same way anyone else would, including the majority of muslims. This isn't a bourgeois interpretation it's just the Qur'an.

Understandable.

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Religion didn't invent algebra, a human who happened to be a muslim did. Just like the Greeks who happened to be pagans invented things. Just like scientists today (most of whom are atheists).

True, but that just proves that one can be very intelligent and religious or non-religious.

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It's ironic in that you believe your god wants what is best for us but he could do no more than send us cults based around himself, telling us when and what to eat and whether we should eat with our right hand or not.

No good. Everybody knows that major religions offer way more guidance than that.

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-Most of the world is, and always has been, non-muslim.
-Most people in the world aren't bad.
-Most atheists are good people.
-Most religionists fare no better, sometimes even worse, than everyone else.
Ergo, hell would be better than rape-central-heaven where the sinning faithful get forgiven.

No offense, but you're beginning to suffer from Mabool Syndrome, in which you don't actually back up your points. There is something like 1.6 billion muslims, and that's enough to be taken seriously. Secondly, how do you know most people aren't bad? Do you have a magic meter that tells you how bad somebody is? Thirdly, "most atheists are good people" How do you know? Lastly, like you said earlier, just because those men were religious, doesn't mean their brilliance was due to religion. Same thing here, just because you are religious doesn't mean you can't be mean or evil.

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B. We aren't free to reject him at all! That's the whole point of the muslim faith, to affirm this god's ego or burn in hell for rejecting it.

You reject "his ego".

God cannot have an ego or any personality of that sort. it would imply polytheism because the ego cannot form in vacuum.
unless he interacts with his subjects to satisfy some sort of desire, in which case he is not omnipotent over us and..
..he is either torturing us or ignoring us. either way, there would be no reason to worship him.

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No offense, but you're beginning to suffer from Mabool Syndrome, in which you don't actually back up your points.

I think you really don't know what backing up a point even means. Seriously, you never had the right to blame me for that. I have never, ever, made an unfounded assertion when I talked to you (or at least not very often, since I don't remember everything I ever told you). Your permanent insistence on how I everything I say is apparently bullshit that I've pulled out of my ass is really embarrassing.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

True, but that just proves that one can be very intelligent and religious or non-religious.

Which is what I was trying to say.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

No good. Everybody knows that major religions offer way more guidance than that.

It offers nothing humans didn't already know or have except for that absurdity I just listed there.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

No offense, but you're beginning to suffer from Mabool Syndrome, in which you don't actually back up your points. There is something like 1.6 billion muslims, and that's enough to be taken seriously.

Not really, that's just a fallacy. Numbers mean nothing when they haven't a single piece of evidence to prove their claims.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Secondly, how do you know most people aren't bad? Do you have a magic meter that tells you how bad somebody is?

The fact that those in prison are a minority of the population should be enough to prove my point. In fact it's just common sense. You're clutching at straws here.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Thirdly, "most atheists are good people" How do you know?

Again, just clutching at straws but in this case there have actually been studies done such as Phil Zuckerman's study which actually showed atheists are more moral than religious people.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Lastly, like you said earlier, just because those men were religious, doesn't mean their brilliance was due to religion. Same thing here, just because you are religious doesn't mean you can't be mean or evil.

You're missing the point here, which was that the majority of the population of hell would be innocent bystanders condemned for thought-crime whereas heaven will be filled with the likes of the Taliban or Republicans. Even the so-called moderate muslims and christians have terrible ideas.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

You reject "his ego".

I reject that he exists and thus reject the "need" to worship him but, if he does, he's sending me to hell for eternity. A rational person will admit that such a being must have a pretty colossal ego about himself.

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I think you really don't know what backing up a point even means. Seriously, you never had the right to blame me for that. I have never, ever, made an unfounded assertion when I talked to you (or at least not very often, since I don't remember everything I ever told you). Your permanent insistence on how I everything I say is apparently bullshit that I've pulled out of my ass is really embarrassing.

Well, the vast majority of the things you've said aren't backed up. Even you have a tiny bit of immunity to the epidemic.

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It offers nothing humans didn't already know or have except for that absurdity I just listed there.

Lies. many people consider God to be a critical part of their lives and love him dearly. There is a reason for that.

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Not really, that's just a fallacy. Numbers mean nothing when they haven't a single piece of evidence to prove their claims.

I've had this argument before. But numbers do mean something, whether you like or not. Religious belief is dominant now and has stodd the test of time. Do you really just want to write off the vast, vast majority of people as stupid? These numbers have more than evidence to back up their claims, they have the hearts and minds of human beings all over the planet.

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The fact that those in prison are a minority of the population should be enough to prove my point. In fact it's just common sense. You're clutching at straws here.

No I'm not. There are plenty of "bad" things one can do within the law. And now you're using the "minority of the population"! So numbers are important now, aren't they?

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Again, just clutching at straws but in this case there have actually been studies done such as Phil Zuckerman's study which actually showed atheists are more moral than religious people.

Ridiculous. How in the hell would anybody measure how "moral" somebody is? Also, I really hope you reject diamat, because if you don't and are relying on "morals" to back up points then there's a serious problem.

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You're missing the point here, which was that the majority of the population of hell would be innocent bystanders condemned for thought-crime whereas heaven will be filled with the likes of the Taliban or Republicans. Even the so-called moderate muslims and christians have terrible ideas.

Again, no. There are no innocent bystanders. Unless you've been living in a cave your entire life. The Taliban isn't going to heaven, I think even Muslims agree. Also, yeah yeah Republicans aren't great but when I hear you comparing them to terrorists it's really hurting the credibility of your argument.

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reject that he exists and thus reject the "need" to worship him but, if he does, he's sending me to hell for eternity. A rational person will admit that such a being must have a pretty colossal ego about himself.

Comparing earthly human "ego" to God is absolutely ridiculous. God isn't just a human that's all powerful.

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God cannot have an ego or any personality of that sort. it would imply polytheism because the ego cannot form in vacuum.
unless he interacts with his subjects to satisfy some sort of desire, in which case he is not omnipotent over us and..
..he is either torturing us or ignoring us. either way, there would be no reason to worship him.

God doesn't have an ego. Why he created us is beyond our knowledge.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Lies. many people consider God to be a critical part of their lives and love him dearly. There is a reason for that.

"Loving god" has contributed _____ to advance human thought.

Fill in the blank but you can't. Science has done away with god and society has never been better.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

I've had this argument before. But numbers do mean something, whether you like or not. Religious belief is dominant now and has stodd the test of time. Do you really just want to write off the vast, vast majority of people as stupid? These numbers have more than evidence to back up their claims, they have the hearts and minds of human beings all over the planet.

Still using fallacies and emotional pleading to support your claims I see. At one time slavery was normal and it had numbers to back it up. I guess you'd have no problem with this because of sheer numbers. Of course, the truth is, not only does the number of religious people in the world prove nothing, they have no evidence. Also, it's odd that you accuse everyone of not backing up their claims but you've done the exact same thing. Where are the statistics for this claim?

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

No I'm not. There are plenty of "bad" things one can do within the law. And now you're using the "minority of the population"! So numbers are important now, aren't they?

Important in this case because it proves that only a minority of the population are criminals. Seriously, this is pathetic and you're still clutching at straws. When talking numbers we'll deal with numbers, when talking about religion we'll deal with religion and the evidence of it's claims.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Ridiculous. How in the hell would anybody measure how "moral" somebody is? Also, I really hope you reject diamat, because if you don't and are relying on "morals" to back up points then there's a serious problem.

I'm a dialectical-materialist that recognizes morals have their foundation and evolution through material and dialectical means.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Again, no. There are no innocent bystanders. Unless you've been living in a cave your entire life. The Taliban isn't going to heaven, I think even Muslims agree. Also, yeah yeah Republicans aren't great but when I hear you comparing them to terrorists it's really hurting the credibility of your argument.

The Qur'an would disagree with you. And yeah Republicans are basically terrorists. Invading countries and dominating the world through capital sounds pretty terroristic to me.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Comparing earthly human "ego" to God is absolutely ridiculous. God isn't just a human that's all powerful.

Just another claim with no evidence. Why do you religionists talk about how close he is to humans and then abstract him from reality on a whim? Let's see how stupid that looks by replacing the word god:

"Comparing earthly human "ego" to the Flying Spaghetti Monster is absolutely ridiculous. The Flying Spaghetti Monster isn't just a human that's all powerful."

See what I did there? I made an abstraction with absolutely no evidence and said something absolutely stupid...like what you just did.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

God doesn't have an ego. Why he created us is beyond our knowledge.

Why the Super Awesome Turtle God created us is beyond our knowledge. As soon as I replace your god with another god you'll agree it looks almost like a joke...except that "huge numbers of people" (according to you) are saying this seriously, and that's what makes it sad.

If I were to go through the Bible and replace every instance of the word "god" with my own name, gave it to you along with a note saying it was a divine revelation from me, you would say that I was a narcissistic, egotistical, terroristic, dimwitted, angry little kid.

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I'm a dialectical-materialist that recognizes morals have their foundation and evolution through material and dialectical means.

Hold on there.

You would use morals to support your arguments even though you know that the dialectical movement of matter determines everything? That seems self-defeating.

Mabool wrote:

Hold on there.

You would use morals to support your arguments even though you know that the dialectical movement of matter determines everything? That seems self-defeating.

I'm pretty sure I just said "morals have their foundation and evolution through material and dialectical means." Not through divine revelation.

I've been reading over Mabool's explanation of dialectics and I had a slight "Eureka" moment. Isn't God just the solution for the fact that "infinity is non-contradictory"? Like Mabool said, infinity is incomprehensible, and for humans to understand, to focus on the totality of things they need, contradictory, the limits that set this totality. God solves this problem with Creation and the eventual end of the world (not necessarily a part of every theology, but still), or even just heaven and hell as the end to a human life.

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"Loving god" has contributed _____ to advance human thought.

Our existence, and if many holy books are true then he also taught us basic technologies used to survive.

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Fill in the blank but you can't. Science has done away with god and society has never been better.

Just did. Again, your white blanket bull is getting annoying.

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Still using fallacies and emotional pleading to support your claims I see. At one time slavery was normal and it had numbers to back it up. I guess you'd have no problem with this because of sheer numbers. Of course, the truth is, not only does the number of religious people in the world prove nothing, they have no evidence. Also, it's odd that you accuse everyone of not backing up their claims but you've done the exact same thing. Where are the statistics for this claim?

Invalid. Slavery was an economic progression, every Marxist knows that. Except you of course. What you are saying is ridiculous, we do have logical reasoning to believe in God, like the existence of immaterial forces. As far as I know I'm backing up what I say, but let me make this clear because you haven't wrapped your head around it yet: I am questioning you, because I think your stance on religion is childish and stupid.

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Important in this case because it proves that only a minority of the population are criminals. Seriously, this is pathetic and you're still clutching at straws. When talking numbers we'll deal with numbers, when talking about religion we'll deal with religion and the evidence of it's claims.

You want to talk about prison numbers and you have Stalin as a picture? Gulag time. Anyways, we apply numbers and religion to similiar things. The reason why we use numbers is to make sense of other things! We didn't just make a number 3 because it looked cool.

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I'm a dialectical-materialist that recognizes morals have their foundation and evolution through material and dialectical means.

Trasnlation: "I have little understanding of diamat, and big girls can cry!"

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The Qur'an would disagree with you. And yeah Republicans are basically terrorists. Invading countries and dominating the world through capital sounds pretty terroristic to me.

I don't care about the Koran, even though it probably holds bounds and bounds of more wisdom than most books you've read. Also, if you think that republicans are the only imperialists on Earth, then we have a deeper problem here.

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See what I did there? I made an abstraction with absolutely no evidence and said something absolutely stupid...like what you just did.

No, you just whined and cried for a few minutes and then compared an omnipotent being to something you saw on Bill Mahr. I just explained that you trying to compare Joe McBob to God is absolutely ridiculous.

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Why the Super Awesome Turtle God created us is beyond our knowledge. As soon as I replace your god with another god you'll agree it looks almost like a joke...except that "huge numbers of people" (according to you) are saying this seriously, and that's what makes it sad.

True. But this only proves the vast and unknowable quality of God; why on earth would any God create somebody who refused to man up and formulate a sound opinion on religion like you? God only knows.

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If I were to go through the Bible and replace every instance of the word "god" with my own name, gave it to you along with a note saying it was a divine revelation from me, you would say that I was a narcissistic, egotistical, terroristic, dimwitted, angry little kid.

You don't have to go through all that trouble. Your posts suffice.
Anyways, you aren't God, you are a human being. Comparing yourself to him is like comparing a flicker in the night to a super nova.

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You would use morals to support your arguments even though you know that the dialectical movement of matter determines everything? That seems self-defeating.

True that comrade.

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I'm pretty sure I just said "morals have their foundation and evolution through material and dialectical means." Not through divine revelation.

I'm pretty sure he just blew a hole in your argument.

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I don't understand why people choose to argue these things...Atheist Marxists believe that religious beliefs will eventually wither away, as material conditions change, so why bother tackling them head on?

I'm just defending what little support there is for religion here. Religion won't die ever, it may change but it'll never die.

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As an atheist, to me it's like someone talking about a dream about a flying pony, on how it was pink. Another will say, "no, it's not pink; it's yellow", a third will argue how it's not even a pony, but a horse, somebody else will compare it to what somebody wrote regarding that dream 2,000 years ago, and how there is a school of interpreting that dream, that you just can't have that dream by yourself, etc.

It makes me angry when atheists pretend that we are dealing with insignificance. No, this is the question of life, not ponies not spaghetti nothing! This is about human history and beliefs held the world over.

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I've been reading over Mabool's explanation of dialectics and I had a slight "Eureka" moment. Isn't God just the solution for the fact that "infinity is non-contradictory"? Like Mabool said, infinity is incomprehensible, and for humans to understand, to focus on the totality of things they need, contradictory, the limits that set this totality. God solves this problem with Creation and the eventual end of the world (not necessarily a part of every theology, but still), or even just heaven and hell as the end to a human life.

That sounds interesting to me.

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You got that right. God is infinity, he's all that cannot be understood by man, all that lies outside the limits of Science. Therefore, trying to prove him scientifically it's just... useless.

Maybe, but that is no reason to just say "we can't prove he exists so why bother believing in him".

This thread is full of religious nonsense that is purely self serving and speculative. The Quran is just a book. The Night of Power was Muhammad sitting in a cave meditating on how he could fool the scattered pagan tribes of the Hashimites and Umayyads of the Quraysh into organizing a moral system with foundational laws. There was no supernatural power that infiltrated his brain via the angel Gabriel and told him to write down messages from outer space. Thus I have a hard time taking your views on the metaphysical universe seriously Dagoth when you base it on a book. Someone much more articulate than myself will need to explain why your Islamic based beliefs are incompatible with dialectic materialism.

I won't pretend to know your situation Dagoth, but I know of many westerners who find appeal in the exotic religions of the east as substitutes for their discontent with western spirituality. It seems you have simply taken Islam and added your own twist to it. As a comrade I hope you one day sever your chains and lay off the opium, cause your clearly high on god right now.

Nice condescension there.

Also you claim Islam is incompatible with daimat then say you can't explain how. That's a shit argument and we both know it. No matter how much you fundamentalist atheists piss and moan none of you have presented an adequate case for why religious people cannot be good comrades or communists. Rather you all appeal to conventional bourgeoisie ethics and infantile far-left disorders. Just like anarchists decry the state as inherently bourgeoisie so does your sort claim that religion is inherantly bourgeoisie. Seizure of the state is meaningless if it doesn't include seizure of social institutions and cultural powerbases. And new atheist cults won't fit the bill either.

Che Burushka hit the nail on the head when he pointed to the necessary withering away of religion. I happily await this day as a theist. To me the final eradication of organized dogmas will lead to a revolution in human spiritual development.

Oh and lastly I find it interesting that fundamentalist atheists and fundamentalist theists both enjoy attacking the integrity of unconventional faithful. It's amazingly anti-intellectual for communists though.

Dagoth Ur wrote:

Nice condescension there.

Also you claim Islam is incompatible with daimat then say you can't explain how. That's a shit argument and we both know it. No matter how much you fundamentalist atheists piss and moan none of you have presented an adequate case for why religious people cannot be good comrades or communists. Rather you all appeal to conventional bourgeoisie ethics and infantile far-left disorders. Just like anarchists decry the state as inherently bourgeoisie so does your sort claim that religion is inherantly bourgeoisie. Seizure of the state is meaningless if it doesn't include seizure of social institutions and cultural powerbases. And new atheist cults won't fit the bill either.

Che Burushka hit the nail on the head when he pointed to the necessary withering away of religion. I happily await this day as a theist. To me the final eradication of organized dogmas will lead to a revolution in human spiritual development.

Oh and lastly I find it interesting that fundamentalist atheists and fundamentalist theists both enjoy attacking the integrity of unconventional faithful. It's amazingly anti-intellectual for communists though.

You cannot argue with religion. There is no argument I or anyone else could present to you to change your beliefs. Honestly would you become atheist overnight because I or someone else stumped you with a post on the internet? I doubt that. So who is really being intellectually dishonest here. And trust me pal, I pay equal amount of time to alternative spirituality. Hell I even read up on the crazy David Icke and his views on consciousness lol.

But you still saw fit to assert a fundamentalist claim.

Regardless the argument is not is God real or not but whether the faithful can be good comrades/communists or not. Also if you could prove a direct contradiction of Diamat in the Quran I would seriously have to question some shit. And some random uncontextualized quote isn't any better than quoting some random segment of the manifesto.

Dagoth Ur wrote:

But you still saw fit to assert a fundamentalist claim.

Regardless the argument is not is God real or not but whether the faithful can be good comrades/communists or not. Also if you could prove a direct contradiction of Diamat in the Quran I would seriously have to question some shit. And some random uncontextualized quote isn't any better than quoting some random segment of the manifesto.

How is it a fundamentalist claim. Atheism is the absence of belief. For example, if you were born on an isolated island you would grow up with no concept of monotheism. Your the one stepping off the boat with your beliefs and presenting claims. The isolated man has no claims about god because god doesn't exist in his reality. Atheism often is wrongly defined as the denial that there is a god. It is properly defined as the absence of belief, which inherently has no claims to make. You can't prove a negative.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Our existence, and if many holy books are true then he also taught us basic technologies used to survive.

The most you could claim with that piece of nonsense is that he created us and that's it. Literally. Religion has contributed nothing to science, philosophy, economics etc. Except futile theological debates which have zero impact on all other people's day to day life.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Just did. Again, your white blanket bull is getting annoying.

Your religious droning is getting annoying.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Invalid. Slavery was an economic progression, every Marxist knows that. Except you of course.

Oh dear, it seems you've missed the point. Let's use another example (Warning: Extremely stupid religious logic following):

-The majority of the world's population is not gay, therefore, all gays ought to turn themselves into heterosexuals.

-The biggest religion is Christianity, all other religions are wrong.

-Monotheism was originally a tribal cult with most other people being pagans, therefore, pagans were right all along.

-The most spoken language in the world is Chinese, therefore, we all ought to drop English and learn Chinese.

Need I go on? It's embarrassing that I even have to explain how fallacious this type of reasoning is.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

What you are saying is ridiculous, we do have logical reasoning to believe in God, like the existence of immaterial forces.

Lol. Nice to see you admit your idealism.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

As far as I know I'm backing up what I say

As far as you know? I just asked for sources to back up your claim, the same thing you've asked everyone else here. Nice double standards.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

I think your stance on religion is childish and stupid.

Right back at you.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

You want to talk about prison numbers and you have Stalin as a picture? Gulag time.

This isn't a debate about Stalin.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Anyways, we apply numbers and religion to similiar things. The reason why we use numbers is to make sense of other things! We didn't just make a number 3 because it looked cool.

What a nonsense statement that was. It's not hard to understand that when we're talking about numbers and statistics, we deal with numbers. Religion has nothing to do with numbers, except for the pointless debates about how many gods there are, and everything to do with evidence. Of course, since you have no evidence, you resort to the numbers game.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

Trasnlation: "I have little understanding of diamat, and big girls can cry!"

Says the idealist.

"Morals" evolve in parallel with the material conditions. This is why we don't have a thousand wives, launch genocides or stone children anymore, like the Bible allows.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

I don't care about the Koran, even though it probably holds bounds and bounds of more wisdom than most books you've read. Also, if you think that republicans are the only imperialists on Earth, then we have a deeper problem here.

Where did I say Republicans were the only imperialists on earth? By now, I've sort of come to expect that you see things which aren't really there.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

No, you just whined and cried for a few minutes and then compared an omnipotent being to something you saw on Bill Mahr. I just explained that you trying to compare Joe McBob to God is absolutely ridiculous.

Who the hell is Bill Mahr and Joe McBob? I compared an "omnipotent being" to another imaginary "omnipotent being" and you getting mad.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

True. But this only proves the vast and unknowable quality of God; why on earth would any God create somebody who refused to man up and formulate a sound opinion on religion like you? God only knows.

Only god knows... could you drone that sentence any more than you already have? Here's a tip you might want to think about in your next post: We're not living in feudalism any more with the Church pulling all the strings answering to no one when they make erroneous claims, it's the 21st century and most people are decent enough to provide the evidence of their claims rather than make abstract, idealist statements. The only place you can get away with saying things like that is at church or if you're the American president. Everywhere else, you get laughed at.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

You don't have to go through all that trouble. Your posts suffice.
Anyways, you aren't God, you are a human being. Comparing yourself to him is like comparing a flicker in the night to a super nova.

I'm not comparing myself with him and you haven't answered the question. And the reason is because you know the Bible and the Qur'an are terrible books that present an egotistical god obsessed with having humans worship him.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

It makes me angry when atheists pretend that we are dealing with insignificance. No, this is the question of life, not ponies not spaghetti nothing!

You mad? Your "god" is becoming more and more insignificant by the second. There is no big brother fairy in the sky watching me on the toilet. There is no sky god who cares about whether I'm eating a piece of bacon or drinking vodka. There is no fairy father that has a son and holy ghost (that are yet all himself) and wormed his way into the womb of Mary to create a miraculous virgin birth only to later kill himself on a tree.

The Bible and the Qur'an will one day take their rightful place, being found only in museums alongside the Rosetta Stone and Mein Kampf, becoming no more than a 30 minute history class on 1st century mythology.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

This is about human history and beliefs held the world over.

Beliefs held the world over? Do you mean to say millions of different, conflicting beliefs held by millions of different people?