German Pride March attacked by Islamist

mindlight · Sunday at 12:00 PM

Hans Blaster said:
I understood that, I was softening my criticism of the evangelizer by not addressing them by name. If that's what you want, fine, safeties off.

The problem is that the person you talked to said no such thing, by your own statements:

From your earlier post (and the tract) indented and italicized:

Doing street evangelism a couple of weeks ago I met an atheist, who, when asked if if he believed in Christ said, "No I do not have a religion, I trust in myself."

This person merely said that they trusted themselves rather than relying on this nebulous notion of "Christ" (or a god, or guardian angle, or spirit or other sort of thing that religious people claim to rely on for support.

"Wow!" I replied, "That is really ambitious, after all the universe is really quite enormous. To see oneself as the source of all the love, life and light that can be found in it is really something, I know that I could never claim that for myself, are you sure you want to go with that position?"

Your response is to refute claims your interlocutor *never* said or even implied. You project it on to the other person that they thought themselves the source of all love, or all life, or all light. That would be a silly thing for anyone to think of themselves. It would be a delusion to think such about yourself. Even the existence of headlamp on someone else's car is evidence for light that you cannot be the source of. A person who actually thought such things would need a padded bedroom.

Was the next thing that happened that they shook their head in disdaine, rolled their eyes, and walked away from the crazy street preacher?

Interesting I just sent this to a Christian woman who said exactly the same thing about the original cartoon. I think you are technically right but it does not really change the position which tends toward my later more developed answer by implication. If an atheist is not the source of all the light, love and life in the universe and if they are finite, imperfect and mortal (true of any human being) then how is their trust in themselves remotely credible or indeed honest about where these things come from. The trust is unwarranted because the self is not enough to answer the question posed. But all these nuances and clarifications would not read so well in a chick tract. The essential point made in the tract is broadly the same - your trust is misplaced.

Nithavela · Sunday at 12:12 PM

mindlight said:
Umm the problem with most street evangelism is that you do not always get to see that part.

You do in Chick Tracts.

mindlight · Sunday at 12:13 PM

So now this version is what I should have said after extensive critique. Hindsight is 20-20

GoldenBoy89 · Sunday at 12:29 PM

mindlight said:
Atheists are still living in the shadow of Stalin and Mao in my view not to mention a broad endorsement of abortion- millions not hundreds.

I don't see how. What part of atheist thought says you need to murder millions of people? What part of atheism says you need to be pro abortion? Atheism only answers one single question. Do you believe in god(s)? What the atheist does after that is up to them.

GoldenBoy89 · Sunday at 12:31 PM

mindlight said:
Go a little deeper and you will find he is even a socially liberal "pastor" of the Universal Life Church - (The ULC has ordained ministers from a wide range of backgrounds and beliefs, including atheists, Christians, Jews, Neopagans and Wiccans) - so I will call BS on that claim.

The point is they aren't a 'satanic band' but judging by your working defition of "atheist" I'm not sure I can convince you in any way.

Hans Blaster · Sunday at 12:36 PM

mindlight said:
Interesting I just sent this to a Christian woman who said exactly the same thing about the original cartoon.

A woman of discernment.

mindlight said:
I think you are technically right but it does not really change the position which tends toward my later more developed answer by implication.

("Technically correct is the best kind of correct" -- number 1.0). We are about to enter the portion of your response where you (not surprisingly) say outlandish things about non-believers. It falls within your deep misunderstanding of non-religion (and perhaps more, we shall see).

mindlight said:
If an atheist is not the source of all the light, love and life in the universe

We start with an entirely unreasonable premise (a strawman perhaps, I don't know all of the fine details of such things) though you assign such sourcing to your god, why would a person who doesn't believe in such things assign it to themselves?

Any individual atheist is:

* a lifeform in the universe with parents who proceeded themselves. They are clearly not the creators of life in the Universe.
* not an emitter of visible light. I live under the glow of the local star "The Sun". It was around before me and will exist after me. I clearly did not create it and no sane person would think they created the Sun. There are also many, many other sources of light in our world we did not create, or were created by other people. No sane individual thinks they created all light.
* not the only person who experiences or receives love. The number of people who don't recognize this is almost certainly higher than the other two (for which among the non-insane, the count should be zero) as there are several mental conditions that inhibit parts of the normal recognition of the emotions of others. I've never met you, nor had detailed personal conversations with you, but I'd hazard that you have both given and received love and that it had nothing to do with me.

I can only guess that this odd substitution comes from the hoary trope that circulates here that atheists "substitute [...] for god." (I blame Paul.) That blank is sometimes filled with "self" or "ego" (other times, "satan", "sin", "idols", etc.).

mindlight said:
and if they are finite, imperfect and mortal (true of any human being)

Like you say, as we all are, and generally all recognize.

mindlight said:
then how is their trust in themselves remotely credible or indeed honest about where these things come from.

It is not myself that I put trust in on their origins:

Light comes from the interaction of the EM field with other fields.
Love is a byproduct of parental involvement in offspring and social bonding in social species like ours.
Life seems to be what happens when a warm, wet planet has all sorts of organic gunk on the surface.

mindlight said:
The trust is unwarranted because the self is not enough to answer the question posed.

And the self would be a very odd place to look for such answers, if one is not some sort of raging egomaniac.

mindlight said:
But all these nuances and clarifications would not read so well in a chick tract. The essential point made in the tract is broadly the same - your trust is misplaced.

What I learned long ago is to never trust anyone handing out tracts. If you had tried it with me you'd gotten a polite: "Kein spreche deutch, Señor." and walked away from you.

mindlight · Sunday at 12:41 PM

GoldenBoy89 said:
I don't see how. What part of atheist thought says you need to murder millions of people? What part of atheism says you need to be pro abortion? Atheism only answers one single question. Do you believe in god(s)? What the atheist does after that is up to them.

In practice the reasons that atheists gave to justify their systematic murder of millions included:

-an unavoidable cost of rapid modernization,
-class warfare (the necessary elimination of the Kulaks)
-Ideological transformation

None of these were religious reasons, they had to do with the ill-conceived ideology these people subscribed to. This is where godlessness goes when unhinged from all religious restraint.

Its a moot point why atheists support abortion the fact is Pew Research Center and YouGov show that roughly 87% to 91% of atheists support legal access to abortion

Nithavela · Sunday at 12:42 PM

Perp's been killed, btw.

mindlight · Sunday at 12:45 PM

GoldenBoy89 said:
The point is they aren't a 'satanic band' but judging by your working defition of "atheist" I'm not sure I can convince you in any way.

You saw the lyrics of the song they were singing, the nickname they gave the "Christian" singer you highlighted was the devil by the way because of his subscription to a pattern of vengeance. Anyone can be a pastor in the ULC - it is a way of being able to marry friends in garden parties and to customize the ceremony in any which way you want.

mindlight · Sunday at 1:00 PM

Hans Blaster said:
Light comes from the interaction of the EM field with other fields.
Love is a byproduct of parental involvement in offspring and social bonding in social species like ours.
Life seems to be what happens when a warm, wet planet has all sorts of organic gunk on the surface.

Profoundly insufficient. You attempt to explain ultimate realities using only proximate causes. Your reductionism impoverishes your definitions.

Life - Chemistry
Love - Biology
Light - Physics

You answer with a description of mechanisms but neglect origins, meaning, moral weight and ultimate reality which are all rooted in the One who created all things and is the reason they exist.

“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” (Romans 11:36)

7thKeeper · Sunday at 1:11 PM

mindlight said:
You answer with a description of mechanisms but neglect origins, meaning, moral weight and ultimate reality which are all rooted in the One who created all things and is the reason they exist.

“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” (Romans 11:36)

Um. Prove that assertion?

Hans Blaster · Sunday at 1:49 PM

mindlight said:
Profoundly insufficient.

To you, not to me, but that's why I don't believe in your god as I find it unnecessary to explain anything.

mindlight said:
You attempt to explain ultimate realities using only proximate causes.

Those weren't proximate.

mindlight said:
Your reductionism impoverishes your definitions.

So sad, don't care.

mindlight said:
Life - Chemistry
Love - Biology
Light - Physics

Yep, that's where they come from.

mindlight said:
You answer with a description of mechanisms but neglect origins,

I literally gave the origins of each of them. I did not work through the orgins of planets with wet organic surfaces, or social species, or the EM field itself. I could address the first two, but have no reason to think the EM field ever not existed.

mindlight said:
meaning,

Meaning is assigned thinking beings. You can assign any meaning to these things (which you clearly do) if you like.

mindlight said:
moral weight

Light and the origin of life have no moral weight. Love is certainly tied to considerations of what is called moral, but the origin of love is not.

mindlight said:
and ultimate reality which are all rooted in the One who created all things and is the reason they exist.

And I have no reason to think this is true. You started this thread making a whole bunch of wild assumptions about atheists, that we are murderous, marxist ego maniacs. I'm letting you deal with the reality of this atheist who is none of those things, but is a philosophical naturalist of the sort that gets called a "materilist/physicalist", so reduction to the physical properties of the Universe is my bag (and my profession.)

mindlight said:
“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” (Romans 11:36)

Not itnerested in Paulianity.

Desk trauma · Sunday at 2:59 PM

mindlight said:
In practice the reasons that atheists gave to justify their systematic murder of millions included:

-an unavoidable cost of rapid modernization,
-class warfare (the necessary elimination of the Kulaks)
-Ideological transformation

None of these were religious reasons, they had to do with the ill-conceived ideology these people subscribed to. This is where godlessness goes when unhinged from all religious restraint.

Its a moot point why atheists support abortion the fact is Pew Research Center and YouGov show that roughly 87% to 91% of atheists support legal access to abortion

You're conflating the rest of us atheism with soviet communism again.

Desk trauma · Sunday at 3:06 PM

mindlight said:
Religion was regarded as "opium to the people" obscuring the march of dialectical materialism to a socialistic future. It apparently did this by doping peoples minds to the alienation and exploitation that capitalism in crisis was imposing upon them. Again it is rationalistic BS and I wonder how so many people could ever have subscribed to it, the failure of Marxist ideology is plain to see.

To say that it is not atheism is completely disingenuous. No atheist is idol free even the most individualistic and egoistic of atheists fabricate their own alternative "crutches" to Christ. Almost no atheists are pure nihilists and so their idols are part of the worldview they must take responsibility for. In the modern age individual choice and a materially reductionist understanding of science are the idols that most atheists subscribe to in the West- the modern holocaust is abortion with euthanasia now rising fast. Chinese atheism has more to with Communist party ideology and again a materially reductionist understanding of science.

Marxism and all of its motley crew of psychotic state communist offspring as well as nihilism, science and whatever else are separate from atheism. Atheism is concerned with only one question, does gods exist, not economic nor governmental systems or philosophy, only that one question.

Trying to say I am somehow in the shadow of Stalin or Mao bearing some of the culpability for the brutality under them because I am atheist makes as much sense as saying you as a christian are in the shadow the deeds of this Islamist attacker because you are both theists.

Landon Caeli · Sunday at 3:48 PM

Desk trauma said:
State communist ideology, not atheist ideology.

Doesn't matter... Stalin and Mao both viewed religion as an "illusion", and as atheists, they were responsible for close to 100 million deaths combined.

Landon Caeli · Sunday at 3:53 PM

Desk trauma said:
Marxism and all of its motley crew of psychotic state communist offspring as well as nihilism, science and whatever else are separate from atheism. Atheism is concerned with only one question, does gods exist, not economic nor governmental systems or philosophy, only that one question.

Trying to say I am somehow in the shadow of Stalin or Mao bearing some of the culpability for the brutality under them because I am atheist makes as much sense as saying you as a christian are in the shadow the deeds of this Islamist attacker because you are both theists.

Atheism does remain in the shadow of Stalin and Mao... Meanwhile, Christianity and Islam have absolutely nothing in common.

Landon Caeli · Sunday at 3:56 PM

Hans Blaster said:
You started this thread making a whole bunch of wild assumptions about atheists, that we are murderous, marxist ego maniacs. I'm letting you deal with the reality of this atheist who is none of those things, but is a philosophical naturalist of the sort that gets called a "materilist/physicalist", so reduction to the physical properties of the Universe is my bag (and my profession.)

You think you can have that, while likening Islam and Christianity on the other hand? There's no way anyone will let you get away with such hypocrisy.

Hans Blaster · Sunday at 4:12 PM

Landon Caeli said:
You think you can have that, while likening Islam and Christianity on the other hand?

What you talkin' about Willis?

Landon Caeli said:
There's no way anyone will let you get away with such hypocrisy.

I don't believe in your god or their god. So what?

Desk trauma · Sunday at 4:28 PM

Landon Caeli said:
Doesn't matter... Stalin and Mao both viewed religion as an "illusion", and as atheists, they were responsible for close to 100 million deaths combined.

Yes. They, and their henchmen, not other uninvolved atheists nor the position of atheism.

Desk trauma · Sunday at 4:29 PM

Landon Caeli said:
You think you can have that, while likening Islam and Christianity on the other hand? There's no way anyone will let you get away with such hypocrisy.

Not get away how? I said what I said. Nothing changes by being outraged or accusing me of hypocrisy.

German Pride March attacked by Islamist

See in the dark

you're in charge you can do it just get louis

See in the dark

Abolish ICE

Abolish ICE

Your turn, Atlanta!

See in the dark

you're in charge you can do it just get louis

See in the dark

See in the dark

Venture life, Burn your Dread

Your turn, Atlanta!

[redacted]

[redacted]

Gone away

Gone away

Gone away

Your turn, Atlanta!

[redacted]

[redacted]

Similar threads