[gwnn]

nige1, great, but do you doubt that there is more than one definition? What are you on about? We (Trinidad, mikeh, gwnn) have explained to you already that we do not believe that there is no god, and we do not believe that there is a god. What is so hard to understand? What's up? Should we write in a different language? Use bullets? Send you a telegraph? Paste a bunch of strange, unwarranted smileys to seem more sympathetic?

[mikeh]

nige1, on 2013-January-09, 14:18, said:

Debate is difficult without a common vocabulary -- and dictionaries provide a reasonable starting point

If what you are trying to do is to understand the thoughts of other people, a dictionary is not as useful as reading what they write. Or is that too complex an idea for you?

[Fluffy]

gwnn, on 2013-January-09, 14:44, said:

What's up? Should we write in a different language? Use bullets? Send you a telegraph? Paste a bunch of strange, unwarranted smileys to seem more sympathetic?

What about embracing the real truth? that would surely do the trick.

[ArtK78]

nige1, on 2013-January-09, 14:18, said:

You don't need to be able to prove something to believe it.

Indeed. That appears to be the entire point of this thread.

[PassedOut]

mikeh, on 2013-January-09, 14:10, said:

google dick amery (spelling uncertain) with reference to global warning. He was acting as a lobbyist when he made the statement, but his history is as a republican politician....US politicians often go on to lucrative lobbying careers: indeed a cynic might suggest that this forms a career goal for many aspirants to the House of Representatives.

Lobbyist Dick Armey’s Pollution Gospel: ‘As An Article Of Faith,’ It Is ‘Pretentious’ To Believe In Global Warming

Quote

DICK ARMEY: Let me say I take it as an article of faith if the lord God almighty made the heavens and the Earth, and he made them to his satisfaction and it is quite pretentious of we little weaklings here on earth to think that, that we are going to destroy God’s creation.

SEN. ORRIN HATCH: Mr. Armey it’s great to have you here. Great to see you again and we appreciate all you’ve done throughout the years and your work on Capitol Hill. Great job.

Armey is a Texas drooler who climbed from local exterminator to House Majority Leader before he was overtaken by scandal and resigned. Recently he was forced from the lobbying firm that he helped to found. I remember Armey on TV insisting that lowering tax rates was the key to increasing tax revenues, along with other monumentally stupid statements.

[Vampyr]

mgoetze, on 2013-January-08, 21:43, said:

Anyway, keep it up, you may eventually reach the same status as 32519 (that is, "on my ignore list").

I find 32519 one of the most entertaining posters in these forums.

[Vampyr]

Codo, on 2013-January-08, 09:15, said:

And btw do you have any evidence that great atheistic organizations work any better, more efficent then religious ones? I cannot find it.

Secular organisations that do a great deal of good:

The NHS
World Wildlife Fund
Doctors without Borders
American Cancer Society
Cancer Research UK
The Red Cross
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Royal National Institute of Blind People

The list could go on for pages and pages.

[Bbradley62]

Vampyr, on 2013-January-09, 22:37, said:

Codo, on 2013-January-08, 09:15, said:

do you have any evidence that great atheistic organizations work any better, more efficent then religious ones? I cannot find it.

Secular organisations that do a great deal of good:

The NHS
World Wildlife Fund
Doctors without Borders
American Cancer Society
Cancer Research UK
The Red Cross
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Royal National Institute of Blind People

The list could go on for pages and pages.

And no matter how long you make that list, you still don't address Codo's question, which you quote above...

[Vampyr]

Bbradley62, on 2013-January-09, 22:56, said:

And no matter how long you make that list, you still don't come close to answering Codo's question, which you quote above...

But Codo's question is based on a mistaken assumption. As posters have mentioned above, little is done "in the name of" atheism. The opposite of a religious organisation is a secular one.

When atheism is the impetus behind a "cause", that "cause" is usually anti-religion. Such an organisation would be concerned with eliminating discrimination, misogyny, superstition and most importantly, the impact or attempted impact of religion on public life.

It is too bad there isn't more of this (mainly the last), because it might be more effective than a scattershot approach. In the United States, for example, people must fight religion in a state-by-state or even town-by-town basis on subjects such as gay marriage, the teaching of creationism in public schools, prayer in public schools, abortion rights, and much more. If only the issues were combined and simplified: almost 250 years ago the Constitution of this country stipulated the separation of church and state. So do your damnedest to ratify a Constitutional Amendment changing that. Until you have done that, shut up.

(Also, of course, Codo's comments about whatever good is done by religious organisations is specific to Germany, since in most (all?) other modern countries social welfare is undertaken by the state).

[32519]

32519, on 2013-January-07, 21:12, said:

What is the purpose of life?

32519, on 2013-January-09, 04:19, said:

Regarding the remaining 20% of prophecies still to be fulfilled: This thread is crammed with posts seeking evidence that God exists. Guess what? God will become visible in you and me and everyone else at the second coming. Yes, you read that correctly. And that my dear friend is the whole purpose of the God of the Jews with creation; an invisible God becoming visible. This amazing story starts in Genesis chapter 1 and ends in Revelation 22. Every single generation from Paul until now has earnestly hoped and desired that their generation would be the one to see it happen. Who knows? Maybe it is ours?

Only 3 other posters ventured an answer to the purpose of life.

billw55, on 2013-January-09, 13:40, said:

Coincidence of course .. the meeting of very small probabilities with very large amounts of time.

Billow55 only says how he believes life originated, not what the purpose is. So am I to understand from this that life has no purpose at all for non-believers? If this is so, then we human beings are to be pitied more than any other living thing. We spend more time, money, energy, and effort etc to raise our offspring only for many of us to be hugely disappointed when at age XX we realise that our offspring have become addicted to alcohol, drugs, nicotine, pornography, or anything else you care to name. To survive we need employment. The organisation employing us now ends up controlling virtually every aspect of our awake time. It controls –
1. What time we get up in the morning
2. What time we leave for work in the morning
3. How long our lunch break is
4. What time we are allowed to go home in the afternoons
5. What time we actually leave to go home in the afternoons, known as overtime often without any financial reward just to meet the deadlines set by the organisation
6. To meet the deadlines set by the organisation, many of us spend our weekends at the organisation as well, again without any financial reward
7. When we are allowed to take annual leave
8. How much annual leave we are entitled to
9. How much annual leave we actually take due to the pressure placed upon us to meet all the deadlines that the organisation has placed upon us
10. By the time we reach retirement age many of us have accumulated unused leave to our credit
11. And to top this off, some organisations have a policy of “use your leave or lose it.” Wow! Where is the fairness in that?
12. Some get to work until age 60, some until age 65. Others keep going until they are forced to quit.

But this is only the start. We spend all this time at the organisation employing us to feed our addictions for all the latest gizmos, faster and bigger cars, bigger houses, the latest fashions etc. To feed these addictions some of us are forced to hold down 2 or more jobs. When we do eventually find some “free” time we are simply too exhausted to do anything. So we flop down in front of the television with some or other fast food on hand and now we start growing in size. Obesity is a growing problem (pun intentional) worldwide, placing a health risk upon many of us.

But things get worse. We spend all this time at work only to see a chunk of what we earn disappear every month against our will. It’s called taxes, medical fund contributions, retirement funding etc. The government squanders a lot of this money on defence, building more powerful and destructive weapons of war so that we can kill each other. When we are in dire need of very expensive medical treatment, the organisations to whom we have been paying all this money to every month do their best to find a reason why the cost is not covered under our policy with them. To top all this off some of us have invested our life savings into a ponzi scheme. We find out when it is too late and are now forced to continue working longer than we intended. The desperate choose a dramatic ending via suicide.

When we die everything has been meaningless, a chasing of the wind. Here today, gone tomorrow, soon forgotten by all.

dwar0123, on 2013-January-09, 13:42, said:

Generically, the purpose of life is to procreate. [32519 asks: Is that it? Once we’ve done our bit, can we move on? Why then do we use condoms etc? Why do countries like China have a one child policy? What happens when the carrying capacity of the world is exceeded? Eventually it must happen. What happens to those living when it happens?]

Specifically and ideally the purpose of any individual life is what ever they want it to be. [32519 asks: What if you are unable to reach what you want it to be? Does that mean your life has been a failure? Does death end it all?]

For you that is to glorify God (32519 said: “And you” – see below). A god who apparently created a 13.7 Billion year old Universe with 100 Billion galaxies sprinkled across the visible Universe that spans a mere 93 billion lightyears. Each galaxy containing about 100 billion stars. And which thanks to Kepler we now reasonable suspect that the planets out number the stars. Yet the God capable of this and so much more, needs you to glorify him (32519 said: That is the very reason why you and I and everyone else exists; for the invisible God to become visible in us, the very reason for creation).

I guess that makes sense to you.

Actually yes it does make sense to me.

hrothgar, on 2013-January-09, 13:42, said:

<snip> for me the reason for life would seem to be a job that I enjoy, a good dinner (preferably with friends) and a good night's sleep.

(A lot of other stuff gets superimposed on these cases)

See reply to the Billow55 post.

Without realising it Kenberg got it right. This is what he posted (unrelated to the question asked) –

kenberg, on 2013-January-09, 08:25, said:

My approach, fwiw, is something like this:
<snip>
We all get to, and have to, choose.

We all get to, and have to, choose. But the God of the Jews has placed a twist to the only choice which matters that we make. It is the Greek word “proorizo” (NT:4309) and means “to limit in advance.” The word appears in Romans 8:29 where God is effectively saying to us “I have limited you in advance to be conformed into the image of my son Jesus.” The twist? We all get the choice to be conformed into the image of Jesus the easy way or the hard way!
Why would God limit us in advance to be conformed into the image of Jesus?
Answer: Adam and Eve were set up and programmed for failure. You have read that correctly as well. And there is a very good reason why they were programmed for failure. But that is another lengthy post not understood by many.

[mikeh]

Hey, who knew that 32519 was marking the answers to the question of the purpose of life! I wonder what the prize is?

Heck, I always thought the answer to the ultimate question, the question about life, the universe and everything had been worked out by Deep Thought some time ago. I mean, I read it in a book, and the book made sense to me, so doesn't that mean that it is infallible? According to the way 32519 thinks anyway.

Oh...the answer....I don't think you're going to like it. The problem, you see, is that we haven't really defined the real question.

I suspect that this crowd will contain quite a few who recognize the answer, so I won't reveal it here.

I must say that the book (and the radio play in particular) was a lot funnier, and often more profound, than 32159's sources. Altho the story does start with the callous death of all but 2 of the earth's inhabitants. That's worse than the second coming, but at least in my preferred story, the people die painlessly and once and for all...none of this sick torturing in a lake of fire followed by an eternity of sickening servility made palatable only by an induced loss of identity.

[Vampyr]

mikeh, on 2013-January-10, 01:25, said:

Hey, who knew that 32519 was marking the answers to the question of the purpose of life! I wonder what the prize is?

I think the prize is an invitation to the Secret Bridge Olympics.

[gwnn]

I thought that book was boring but maybe because I have already known many of the well-known jokes from it. Still the book tried rather too hard for my taste.

[blackshoe]

"A zygote is a gamete’s way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe." - R. A. Heinlein, From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

[Vampyr]

mikeh, on 2013-January-10, 01:25, said:

Oh...the answer....I don't think you're going to like it. The problem, you see, is that we haven't really defined the real question.

I think that the problem really is that the question has as many definitions as there are people willing to define and/or answer it. That is why the answer you refer to is as good as any.

But 32's last post was illuminating. If his life is that grim, perhaps he needs some sort of "higher purpose" or at least an afterlife to keep from going mad.

[Vampyr]

Anyway. This thread is becoming less and less interesting. It seems that the thining believer has kept his or her belief private, and the contributing believers have managed to produce a whole load of drivel.

Besides, it doesn't matter whether or not we believe. An omniscient God already knows who will be saved and who will not. So why should we worry about ut?

[gwnn]

Vampyr, on 2013-January-10, 02:12, said:

Besides, it doesn't matter whether or not we believe. An omniscient God already knows who will be saved and who will not. So why should we worry about ut?

Either because God is artificially limiting his own omniscience or because this omniscient god knows that you will worry. (Not really convincing but these are the two usual answers)

[Codo]

Vampyr, on 2013-January-09, 23:12, said:

But Codo's question is based on a mistaken assumption. As posters have mentioned above, little is done "in the name of" atheism. The opposite of a religious organisation is a secular one.

When atheism is the impetus behind a "cause", that "cause" is usually anti-religion. Such an organisation would be concerned with eliminating discrimination, misogyny, superstition and most importantly, the impact or attempted impact of religion on public life.
...

(Also, of course, Codo's comments about whatever good is done by religious organisations is specific to Germany, since in most (all?) other modern countries social welfare is undertaken by the state).

Obviously I made a mistake, after all religion is inverior to Atheism in your view, so the fault must be on my side.
I think that religious and non religious organizsations can work on the same level. Beliving or not makes them not better or worse. So if we agree here, fine, else I want some examples.

I really do not get your last sentence. Do you really believe that social welfare is in any given country just done by the state? And that we have no social welfare here from our governement? Hard to believe, but if this is your believe: You are wrong. And if it was meant funny, I did not get the joke, sorry.

[Fluffy]

I've tried to explain some of my beliefs, but I reckon that some of my points are weak.

however non believers haven't told me yet why they value their life, and most important, why they value other's lives.

[Cyberyeti]

Codo, on 2013-January-10, 04:15, said:

Obviously I made a mistake, after all religion is inverior to Atheism in your view, so the fault must be on my side.
I think that religious and non religious organizsations can work on the same level. Beliving or not makes them not better or worse. So if we agree here, fine, else I want some examples.

There are numerous instances of Catholic agencies going into poor African countries and while distributing aid, promoting abstinence rather than condoms. Of course the people had sex anyway without them and AIDS spread more than it would have done otherwise although less people died of starvation.

Whether an organization is religious or not makes no difference to me if they're doing good. When they start spreading their beliefs at the expense of the best interests of the population I draw the line.