I've seen a lot of things written here about atheism and atheists. The more charitable items suggest that we're mentally or emotionally disturbed, and/or are suffering from some other form of dementia.
Personally, I never really considered the possibility that you religious folk were somehow demented (with some specific exceptions), just mistaken. Why can't you return the favor?
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. -- Thomas Jefferson
"Most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith" ~ Sam Harris, Letter to A Christian Nation
Of course, the representation of religious belief as a form of psychosis (also a major motif of Dawkins' writings) traces back to people like Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, and the modern cultural-ideological movement of Atheism owes much to these figures. Of course, such a view simultaneously spells the intellectual death of any movement - as soon as you label your interlocutor as insane, you deprive yourself of any capacity to intellectually engage with his or her ideas in order to develop your own ideas.
It is worth noting from an Islamic theological perspective, disbelief cannot be the result of mental impairment, for it would render a person unaccountable. It is fundamentally a spiritual shortcoming which subsequently has emotional, social, psychological, and intellectual ramifications as all these dimensions of life are filtered through the our particular weltanschauung.
Lol, hey, I'm a Millennial - we're not so bad! But yes, I do kind of see what you're trying to say. That said, I'm a big supporter of political correctness because I believe the lack of political correctness is driving the kind of bad ideas we see emerging openly from people who don't even feel ashamed or any qualms about saying anymore that they want Muslim lands nuked or Muslims to be killed; I read this kind of poisonous nonsense almost on a daily basis on the Internet, and I've only just started recording the idiotic comments made in one of my recent threads.
Short of an actual and immediate call to violence, censorship is never a good idea. It only pushes the ideas underground and pushes counter-culture. The better idea is the free marketplace ideas. The answer to bad ideas is good ideas, not silencing people.
Yet it's getting a little bit out of control with "Muslims get out" restaurant sign to actually Muslims constantly having to exercise hypervigiliance in regards to mosques being burnt or vandalism happening to Islamic centers; to be honest, I'm just looking at it from a bird's eye view of history and seeing that the trends that we're seeing today specific to Muslims is actually quite reminiscent of the time before the Holocaust took place because Antisemitism in Europe had been taking the exact forms it's taking today specific to Muslims
And I can stand shoulder to shoulder with you on that; unless and until you switch from progressive to regressive and start making things up to put into the mouths of others that you refuse to actually hear. I am not saying you do that, but that is what regressives do. A classic example is this clip of Cenk Uygur interviewing an author, calling his book absurd, and telling him what the book says, having never read it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMzCitlbsh0 .
We have seen people like Reza Aslan do the same to Sam Harris. Sam Harris believes that we should "anti-profile" people, meaning not spend as much scrutiny of obvious non-threats like six year old girls as on people who look like himself and like middle easterners, as scrutiny is a limited resource. He can imagine a crazy scenerario where using torture and where using nuclear weapons could be acceptable. I disagree with him on each of these points, but I recognize and acknowledge that his is NOT saying that we should nuke the middle east or torture muslims.
For the record, I don't think anyone should have impunity from criticism, but I also understand the importance of political correctness in everyday discourse and behaviors. For example, I also note that blacks were called N-word and there's a reason we don't use that word anymore; it is because we know the historical associations and connotations that word implies. If we use it, we should rightly be called bigoted and ostracized from having a say in public discourse; someone might say that's unfair but we have a right as a self-regulating society to be able to determine what types of persons and discourses we want to embolden within our society because the matter is far bigger than freedom of expression but includes the ability of such discourse to marginalize further a minority.
Words are words. Not magical powers. They have the power we give them and only that. There was a time when Moron, and Idiot were not negative words, but instead descriptive words. Then we had Retarded people, which also later became a negative word. We had Gay as a very negative word back in the 80s, and now that word has been claimed by the homosexual community and isn't a slur anymore except among extreme anti-homosexual bigots. You can say "Gay" to a homosexual and nobody will blink. The "N-word", and I only call it that because I sense the mods will censor me otherwise, has a toxic connotation because of the history of extreme bigotry against blacks to the point of slavery, but even that word CAN be used in some very limited cases without any bigotry at all. You can see black people using it while joking around, and George Carlin, a white comedian, dared to use it and did so in a not at all bigoted way. I really miss George Carlin. His "words you can't say on TV" routine is a bit out dated now, but still a classic.
Also, I'd note in the United States, the word "Negro" and "Oriental" are banned since Obama signed a legislation during his administration making it so.
A ridiculous abuse of power for a man imagined to be liberal. I don't think I have ever mentioned it, because it is rarely relevant, but I am Asian. I take no offence whatsoever to anybody calling me "Oriental" unless it is said with malice.
I do think the cartoons should be censored even if there'd never been any cause to believe that there would be any negative reaction, and the reason is because I frankly think it's hate speech. Also, I've seen a double standard emerge when we talk about these cartoons specific to Muslims. Can you imagine us talking about whether there should be cartoons of the Holocaust in the United States or anywhere in the West? Hell, no. People would say that's Antisemitism. Not to mention, Holocaust denials are already banned in 14 countries across Europe. The only places such cartoons are drawn is in Iran, a matter about which I have nothing good to say because I feel it's an exercise in hate that should not be allowed to exist and is also against Islamic values.
Cartoons about the death and torture of holocaust victims are certainly in bad taste; as are cartoons about doing the same to Muslims. But what of other cartoons? Much of what Charlie Hebdo drew isn't all that offensive, and some of it is even anti-discrimination oriented. Jesus & Mo is a comic strip where Jesus and Mohammed are depicted sitting around chatting and making some puns. Do you consider that hate speech? I know your religion forbids you from drawing Mohammed, but why can't I? Why should I have to restrict my behaviour based on your religion, especially if I am not directing it at you? I will do what I want, and if you decide to get offended, that is your problem.
And of hate speech itself, without a threat of violence, would you ban it? How about blasphemy laws? In favour or against?
I would like to point out that form an atheist's viewpoint, the Bible and Quran and their religions can be easily seen as hate speech. These are books that say things like kill the unbeleiver where you find him, don't suffer a witch to live, etc. And these are religions that often conflate obedience for morality and often state belief as essential for morality. They also often say it is justice for anybody who doesn't believe in and follow their God to suffer eternally in hellfire. Hate speech? Yes. Ban it? No.
Also, yes, I've seen Dave Rubin and Sam Harris put the idea forward that actually not identifying radical Islam or Islamic terrorism as the cause of how all this problem and is somehow "racist" against us Muslims because the regressive left are the ones who're "secretly" perhaps thinking how Muslims might turn batshit crazy and attack the majority. And Sam Harris even went so far as to say that's a possibility that the Muslim gynecologist could perhaps in fact turn certifiably nuts but that's a chance we have to take. Wut? Like seriously. The fact that he thinks like that is more cause of concern because he's actually exposing his own Islamophobia rather than actually making any meaningful comments about the so-called regressive left.
What he is saying there is that either the typical Muslim really is that fragile and volatile (which he says he thinks isn't the case), or the regressive left is doing a huge disservice to Muslims in imagining them to be like that. Comedians, TV shows, pretty much everybody can talk about, draw, make jokes about any other religion, but when it comes to Islam and Mohamed people walk on eggshells. I would like to see more prominent Muslims simply laugh off Charlie Hebdo or stuff like Jesus & Mo, showing they have a thicker than paper-thin skin and showing that they have a sense of humor and can laugh at themselves. It would help undo that thin skinned volatile image the islamists and regressive left have created for the religion. The Mormons don't react to the "Book of Mormon" broadway musical by screaming for blood or protesting in the streets. They took an add out in the show's program, using it as a way to invite people to what real Mormonism is. Now that's awesome.
As for truly hateful stuff like the "Burn a Quran" guy or people attacking mosques, etc, that needs to be called out and marginalized based on what it actually is and what these people actually say. Remember Fred Phelps, the "God Hate Fags" preacher? He used to stand outside the funerals of homosexuals with a megaphone shouting out how they were burning in hell, etc. A biker gang got involved in response. But they didn't rough him up or have him put in jail or anything. No, they counter protested and blocked the funeral off and revved their bikes up so the people at the funeral didn't have to hear Phelps. Remember the North Carolina anti-gay and anti-transgender law not too long ago? The action taken in response was to boycott. Banks, musicians, tons of businesses simply refused to do business there. The same sort of reaction works well against shop owners who are bigoted against gays, and it would work against those bigoted against Muslims too if we got enough people doing a boycott. This is how liberals operate. Leave banning free speech to the conservatives.
For the record, I don't think the regressive left as we're so called are afraid of this but we're actually afraid of having Islam and terrorism become synonymous because the wider public (especially the right-wingers voting Trump) will certainly not be able to make the distinction (as they don't on a daily basis on the Internet comments' sections I read) and I'm sure the 600% increase that you've seen in Islamophobia in U.K. is going to rise to a higher level and the tripled Islamophobia increase in U.S. since Paris Attacks is probably going to significantly increase as well, and I'm saying these based on statistics and also the truth that legitimizing a discourse means that more people will feel free to engage in the same because we're influenced by our peers as was pointed out by an article titled "Comments affect perception of research, study says."
Shutting down free speech and the free marketplace of ideas is completely anti-liberal, and that is why we call it regressive instead of progressive. Bad ideas can be fought with good ideas; and indeed that is the only way good ideas can triumph. Otherwise the bad will just go underground and fester there bringing people to them. You want to fight bigotry? That is great. Let's do it by you and I holding hands and standing back to back against it, in all of its forms. Pretty much everybody has felt it against them in one way or another at least to some extent. The fact that there are homophobic black men and racist homosexuals boggles my mind, and if we could only get them to focus on the feeling of bigotry against themselves, they may be able to recognize it coming from themselves and put an end to it.
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz_qhlRN0L8 by the same people being extremely brave and awesome. Note how they didn't cut out the negative reactions, and how heart warming the positive ones are in contrast.
Well, as a woman, I have a very different take on these issues; and we can probably explore that in my thread about rape and victim-blaming. I'm probably going to come out sounding all feminist on this one though I'd certainly be interested to see where we might end up in discussion on the topic.
I haven't come upon that thread yet. Where is it?
Well, and good, but sorry, the guilt should be there; people in my humble opinion seem to be rewriting history to make the villains out to be the minorities when it's been well-documented that the majority are the ones to blame for much of the status quo. So, I'm not going to award anyone the "get-out-of-jail card" like in Monopoly except here it's in terms of correctly identifying guilt and feeling it deservedly.
Guilt for who and for what? Should you feel guilty because you are a Muslim and islamists exist? Should every white person feel guilty for what happened to the native populations Europeans of that era eradicated? Should modern day Germans feel guilty for the holocaust? Why? The former in each case is not in any way responsible for the latter.
Would we want to, for example, invite Neo-Nazi individuals like Craig Cobb who believes in the inferiority of the black race and fighting their influence and presence by promoting the building of all-white communities? Or do we invite Farid Mortazavi to talk about the rightness of the Holocaust cartoons in Iran? Seriously, freedom of speech should not extend to including hate speech; it's not about the "thin skins" of others that might take offense but about how "thick-headed" these individuals are that they want the right to offend and spew hate speech and want to promote it as a collective good.
I see no reason to invite them. I see no reason to forbid them an invitation either. The only reason I wouldn't bringing them in is because there are better speakers to bring in. That said, I wouldn't mind listening to what Farid Mortazavi has to say and why he thinks holocaust cartoons are important, if he can do it in a calm manner. I may learn something. I may get an insight into why he thinks what he does and what may break him out of it.
Don't you see the irony of painting the people who won't agree with Maajid Nawaz or Sam Harris as "regressive left" which I personally see as sophisticated name-calling that is meant to put a question mark on their validity and base.
That would be ironic, but that isn't what I am doing. You can disagree with people all you want and it doesn't make you regressive.
Regressive is about forbidding people to speak and then pretending you know what they meant to say, like Cenk telling an author of a book he he hasn't read what it really says. Regressive is about "Safe Spaces" where your ideas won't be challenged, and "Trigger Warnings", and the search for "Micro-Aggressions" to be offended over. Regressive is about Identity Politics and the Oppression Olympics, where people compete to be or find groups more oppressed than other groups, and then treat individuals within them as if they are all the same and give them the exclusive right to speak with impunity. If you're not doing this, you are not part of the regressive left.
Last edited by Pygoscelis; 10-06-2016 at 03:09 PM.
It is worth noting from an Islamic theological perspective, disbelief cannot be the result of mental impairment, for it would render a person unaccountable. It is fundamentally a spiritual shortcoming which subsequently has emotional, social, psychological, and intellectual ramifications as all these dimensions of life are filtered through the our particular [/COLOR][/SIZE][I]weltanschauung[SIZE=2][COLOR=#545454].
wasalam
What is it with you Muslims? Why do your explanations *always* require a dictionary to understand?
Anyway, this "shortcoming" only exists in the eye of the believer.
The purpose of our existence, the believers say, is to fulfill the requirements of their deity, which ultimately will lead to some form of eternal reward. How, they ask, can life have purpose without admitting to the existence of God?
In itself, this is a tacit stipulation that nature/the universe by itself is impersonal, indifferent to its components and without an inbred purpose, that it just "is." This is one point upon which most theists and atheists agree. The divergence occurs immediately after, with the theistic insistence on the inherent purpose of an intentionally - created cosmos. Meanwhile, the rationalist approach grows directly out of the apparent universal impersonality:
1. The Cosmos resulted from the interplay of natural processes with no discernible evidence of a guiding intelligence. There is therefore no reason to postulate an external purpose to its existence.
2. If the universe, and thereby its components, has no inherent purpose, any perceived purpose must be assigned.
3. So far as can be demonstrated, humans are the only beings capable of perceiving meaning or purpose and thus are the only entity capable of assigning them.
4. Therefore, Meaning and Purpose are human constructs and are only relevant in a human, not a divine or cosmic, context (upon this point I disagree with Carl Sagan, who famously stated that "We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself").
5. The ultimate conclusion is that humanity must establish its own purpose in life because life will not furnish it. What that purpose is or should be is a personal opinion.
Another question relating to emotional health is the personal view of an afterlife. Religious proselytizers often use the afterlife as an anchor point for their arguments; I once wound up at the top of a fundamentalist Christian's prayer list when he asked me where I planned on spending eternity and I replied "Cleveland."
Belief in an afterlife does not necessarily require a belief in God. In a non-religious belief system, ghosts and spirits remain on earth after death, often interacting with the living until they can "go toward the light," whatever that may be. Spending an eternity in Cleveland is therefore a distinct possibility.
In fact, it is easier to defend belief in a secular afterlife than in a religious afterlife because secular believers can at least cite abundant anecdotal evidence (seeing a ghost, etc) that does not depend on religious explanation and that spans all of humanity throughout history.
However, anecdotes are insufficient for a variety of reasons. Chief among these is that the ghost/spirit believer begins with the assumption that ghosts exist, despite that their existence has never been established as fact. They see because they already believe. Anecdotal evidence, no matter how abundant, is only worthwhile in science if it can be corroborated by verifiable physical evidence. In ten thousand years of human existence, verification of any kind of afterlife has never been known to have happened. As with God, then, there is no good reason to believe in a life after death.
It goes further. Not only is the evidence for an afterlife insufficient, the claimed existence of ghosts, spirits and souls violates everything we have come to understand about how the universe works (as in the conservation of energy). Therefore, there is reason to actively doubt the existence of an afterlife, be it religious or secular.
Then there's morality. How, asks the believer, does the atheist distinguish right from wrong, good from evil? Without God and the Ten Commandments (or whatever), where's the yardstick for measuring behavior?
To begin with, the Golden Rule can be found in almost all settings, both religious and secular, throughout history albeit the wording varies from one instance to another (it's been suggested that both the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments were inspired by the Code of Hammurabi). So, the concept appears to be universal and is therefore a human trait, not at all religious. It's really a simple idea: I won't slap you because I don't want you to slap me back, maybe harder.
But morality involves more than just the desire to avoid pain; compassion, empathy and affection often play a part. If nothing else, the vast majority of humanity, religious and otherwise, wants to be moral simply because most people are good and decent, and they like doing good for its own sake. The basic Christian doctrine of original sin is demonstrated to be wrong every time a non-Christian throws a few coins into a Christmas kettle.
Finally, the believer asks The Big Question: Where did the universe come from if it wasn't created by God? As noted above, it came about through an interplay of natural processes that at present is known as the Big Bang. What caused the Big Bang, though? It's at this point that the atheist must shrug and admit he doesn't know, which gives the believer an opportunity to victoriously claim credit on God's behalf (usually with great excitement).
But the question remains, Where did God come from? Unlike the atheist, the believer often seems almost afraid to admit ignorance and will either fall back on a simple insistence on God's eternal nature or, more amusingly, will bend over backwards giving tortured scientific-sounding explanations. It's as if their faith requires that God be explained.
At any rate, the atheist admits that he doesn't know what caused the Big Bang; the believer insists that he knows what caused the Big Bang but won't admit that he doesn't know what caused the cause.
If a natural explanation will suffice, there is no need for a supernatural explanation. This does not mean that a supernatural explanation can be imposed whenever a natural explanation doesn't appear to exist ("we don't know, therefore God did it"). To me, it seems pointless, less than helpful and in this case almost cowardly to invoke an unknown in explanation of an unknown.
It takes a certain amount of courage to leave the nest and strike out on your own. Foremost, it requires a total acceptance of responsibility; this means not only that you accept blame for your misdeeds without reliance on divine forgiveness, but that you also take full credit for your accomplishments. That is, there's no getting off of sinning by saying a Hail Mary, and God did not win your football game for you. You did it all yourself, and the consequences are all yours.
Atheism also requires acceptance of a total lack of external appreciation for your efforts, and that you are content with personal satisfaction in your existence. It also helps if you are able to enjoy and rejoice in the beauty of this fragile and temporary life for its own sake.
Last edited by jabeady; 10-06-2016 at 04:20 PM.
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. -- Thomas Jefferson
Then there's morality. How, asks the believer, does the atheist distinguish right from wrong, good from evil? Without God and the Ten Commandments (or whatever), where's the yardstick for measuring behavior? To begin with, the Golden Rule can be found in almost all settings. It's really a simple idea: I won't slap you because I don't want you to slap me back, maybe harder.
The Golden Rule has very important exceptions that are absolutely essential to our survival. The first one is probably uncontested: The child shall obey its parents. The second one is heavily contested by atheists: The wife shall obey her husband. Atheists have not demonstrated that reproduction from generation to generation would actually be possible without this. In fact, the numbers suggest the opposite.
In that sense, atheism looks very much like a form of collective long-term suicide. You see, atheists are completely missing the ball here, because if you do not rule over the women, inevitably, someone else will.
format_quote Originally Posted by jabeady
But the question remains, Where did God come from? At any rate, the atheist admits that he doesn't know what caused the Big Bang; the believer insists that he knows what caused the Big Bang but won't admit that he doesn't know what caused the cause.
If you look at the Fibonacci sequence, for example, you can see:
So, it is possible to explain all Fibonacci numbers, but not F(1) and not F(2).
Where does F(1) and F(2) come from? Why is F(1)=1 and F(2)=1?
Why can we explain all other Fibonacci numbers but not the two first ones?
The atheist therefore sees a flaw in these numbers. The first two numbers explain all the other ones, but since these first two numbers are unexplained themselves, there is something wrong with the Fibonacci series. The believer insists that he knows what explains the other numbers but won't admit that he doesn't know what explains F(1) and F(2).
Yes, it is true that the believer does not know what explains F(1) and F(2), but so what?
i find it remarkable that a man could look up at the stars..
understand that most of them are simply beautiful and others barren and unlit..
science yay!
then turn around an say there is nothing remarkable about humanity.
Who says there is nothing remarkable about humanity? The only known beings capable of considering their own mortality, transporting their most favorable environment to virtually any location, altering that environment, leaving the planet, curing and eradicating disease... There is plenty to appreciate about humanity. In fact, atheists tend to appreciate humanity more because they don't credit humanity's accomplishments to a deity who supposedly doesn't care to do better.
..but the question remains..
what have you built?
dont say cleveland.
I have built a life. I did it. Me.
It hasn't been a perfect life, a lot has gone wrong, but more has gone right. A bit of the good and bad has been due to chance, but most of it has been through my own effort (plus a little help from family and friends). My wrongs are my own responsibility, but so are the things I have done right.
When I die, I am satisfied my wrongs will die with me, while one or two of my accomplishments will live on a little while after. That's all I can hope for, and it's all that I ask. I might wish for more, but wishing is less satisfying than hope.
ironically thats your natural order right there, how we fumble around and accidentally find things that we call our lives..
through no fault of our own.
But that's my point. It is *all* entirely through "fault" of our own. No god has lived my life, it's been mine to live. Just like my death and dissolution will be mine.
BTW, before you bring it up, unlike you, I am beginning to have a pretty good idea of when I will die. Of course I can never be certain, but the difference between natural causes and accident is becoming visibly smaller. In fact, I'm within seven years of the age my father died, so it wouldn't matter that much if I were to die later this afternoon.
---
Why is it, after 10,000 years of recorded gods, the best argument theists have is, "You'll find out when you die"?
Last edited by Muhammad; 10-06-2016 at 06:21 PM.
Reason: Inappropriate comment removed
...the believer insists that he knows what caused the Big Bang but won't admit that he doesn't know what caused the cause...
Fibonacci numbers are a recurrence relation of the second order, which means that you will have two seed values that you are not allowed to explain. It is simply forbidden to explain them. Math demands consistency. Explaining these seed values would automatically be inconsistent. Furthermore, this is general requirement. Any n-th order recurrence must have exactly n unexplained values. So, get over it. And welcome to the real world! ;-)
Why is it, after 10,000 years of recorded gods, the best argument theists have is, "You'll find out when you die"?
Because there are many more things that are unexplained than things that are explained. Your question sounds a bit like the 1928 challenge posed by David Hilbert, famously called the Entscheidungsproblem. In short, the question is: Will it ever be possible to explain everything? In 1936, Alonzo Church and Alan Turing published independent papers showing that a general solution to the Entscheidungsproblem is impossible. This result is known as the Church-Turing thesis. Therefore, the answer to your question is: No, no, no, and again: no.
Who says there is nothing remarkable about humanity? The only known beings capable of considering their own mortality, transporting their most favorable environment to virtually any location, altering that environment, leaving the planet, curing and eradicating disease... There is plenty to appreciate about humanity. In fact, atheists tend to appreciate humanity more because they don't credit humanity's accomplishments to a deity who supposedly doesn't care to do better.
I have built a life. I did it. Me.
It hasn't been a perfect life, a lot has gone wrong, but more has gone right. A bit of the good and bad has been due to chance, but most of it has been through my own effort (plus a little help from family and friends). My wrongs are my own responsibility, but so are the things I have done right.
When I die, I am satisfied my wrongs will die with me, while one or two of my accomplishments will live on a little while after. That's all I can hope for, and it's all that I ask. I might wish for more, but wishing is less satisfying than hope.
But that's my point. It is *all* entirely through "fault" of our own. No god has lived my life, it's been mine to live. Just like my death and dissolution will be mine.
BTW, before you bring it up, unlike you, I am beginning to have a pretty good idea of when I will die. Of course I can never be certain, but the difference between natural causes and accident is becoming visibly smaller. In fact, I'm within seven years of the age my father died, so it wouldn't matter that much if I were to die later this afternoon.
In short, the things I've said above, I've said staring your god directly in the face. Despite this, I still don't see anything there.
Why is it, after 10,000 years of recorded gods, the best argument theists have is, "You'll find out when you die"?
im lost for words lol.
i think if i started staring my god in the face i wouldnt last a day lol.
we have obviously lived different lives.
before i ended my football days i used to miss on purpose..
dont think iv told anybody that before.
spent half a day asleep.. il probably spend the other half trying to convince myself im awake.
In fact, atheists tend to appreciate humanity more because they don't credit humanity's accomplishments to a deity who supposedly doesn't care to do better.
Atheists badly overestimate humanity. That is probably why they believe that they can redesign its blueprint. In atheist terms, regardless of whoever or what process designed humanity's blueprint, it was obviously not humanity itself.
Hubris, also hybris, from ancient Greek ὕβρις) describes a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous over-confidence.
As late as 1930, David Hilbert believed that there would be no such thing as an unsolvable problem.Gödel demonstrated that any non-contradictory formal system, which was comprehensive enough to include at least arithmetic, cannot demonstrate its completeness by way of its own axioms. In 1931 his incompleteness theorem showed that Hilbert's grand plan was impossible as stated.
I would actually have forgiven David Hilbert, because at least, he was smart enough to understand why he was wrong. The problem is rather with atheists who are not as smart as Hilbert, not even close, -- most of them obviously -- and who could impossibly understand why they are wrong. That is probably why -- while these impossibilities were discovered in the 1930ies -- you will still see atheists come up with the all the same discredited ideas in 2016. It is not that we should expect that the situation will have become any better in 2036. Hubris is timeless, if only because it is primarily fueled by ignorance.
...you just wait until people start appearing out of thin air.
:|
The Messiah, as played by Keanu Reeves?
Again with the waiting! Gotta wait for the Rapture, gotta wait for the 2nd Coming, gotta wait for Doomsday... Why is God such a procrastinator? Is he trying to build dramatic tension, or what?
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. -- Thomas Jefferson
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(In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)
(Peace be upon you)
(And peace be upon you)
Like seriously. The fact that he thinks like that is more cause of concern because he's actually exposing his own Islamophobia rather than actually making any meaningful comments about the so-called regressive left.
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