The coolest atheist.

[Axcess]

You see I pretty much "owned" Hitchens in that post and YOU still don't get it.

Reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECI4QK_mXA&feature=related

[don't take offense, that was being funny if you watch the vid]

I understood your original post very well . Yes some atheists inflicted suffering to others . It is true that some humans would find any excuse to hate and harm others but I was talking about the way that he owned religious guys in debates and is very fun . In debates he shows how childish and absurd religion really is . Religion is about power and control not about the truth or reality . I think that he shows this in a brilliant way .

 

[B_spiker067]

So much for answering a simple question. :tongue:

Who do you think I'd name?

 

[B_spiker067]

I understood your original post very well . Yes some atheists inflicted suffering to others . It is true that some humans would find any excuse to hate and harm others but I was talking about the way that he owned religious guys in debates and is very fun . In debates he shows how childish and absurd religion really is . Religion is about power and control not about the truth or reality . I think that he shows this in a brilliant way .

I can only effectively defend Christianity because it is the only one I understand enough and the only one I'd care to defend. Hitchens used to put me in that quandary of defending all religions, rather clever trick really.

When someone enumerates what has been done in the absence of God Hitchens will hem and haw that those aren't REAL atheists for some reason or other (laughably its is usually because they weren't "raised atheists").

By that standard of Hitchens' there isn't a single murder, genocide, or criminal act that can be attributable to REAL Christian doctrine. Show me in the New Testament <-the Christian compact that trumps much but not all of the Old Testament) where any kind of crime is validated. Now show me in the Atheist's Bible where it is writ large that genocide is unacceptable under any conditions.

Fact of the matter is Hitchens has a problem with how religions often get expressed more than anything else. Faith is largely an individual endeavor and in particular, in our culture, is what made the individual important. It was the protestant movement that made the illiterate literate and thereby able to learn that God wants an individual relationship and not one through a king or priest. This mass realization of individual primacy transformed Greek democracy into what is now American democracy. Ultimately God (fictitious or not) made this country literate and free and not a couple of atheists.

 

[Notthe7]

Damn, Why didn't I think of George Carlin.

 

[Calboner]

When someone enumerates what has been done in the absence of God Hitchens will hem and haw that those aren't REAL atheists for some reason or other (laughably its is usually because they weren't "raised atheists").

I haven't read God Is Not Great, but the standard reply to that sort of argument, whether or not Hitchens gives it (the reply, I mean), is that none of the atheists behind large-scale atrocities have invoked the non-existence of God to justify their acts in the way that theists behind large-scale atrocities (or say crusades and inquisitions, if we are only considering Christians) have invoked God to justify theirs.

By that standard of Hitchens' there isn't a single murder, genocide, or criminal act that can be attributable to REAL Christian doctrine. Show me in the New Testament <-the Christian compact that trumps much but not all of the Old Testament) where any kind of crime is validated. Now show me in the Atheist's Bible where it is writ large that genocide is unacceptable under any conditions.

I'm sure Hitchens would be able to show you many such passages; for my part, since you mention the Old Testament, I would cite the passage where God tells Saul to "go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys’ ” (New International Version). That certainly sounds to me like the validation of a crime. As to your reference to "the Atheist's Bible," I can't see how you are making any kind of argument there. No such document exists, so, a fortiori, there is no condemnation of genocide in it. So what?

 

[B_spiker067]

Cal,

Clearly, and I repeat, the Old Testament is largely trumped by the New Testament. Christianity is based on the New Testament. There is nothing in the New Testament that justified the crusades, inquisition, or any other incident you'd care to mention.

If the Christian religion is to be blamed for those things then the professed disbelief/atheism of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al are to blame for tens of millions of deaths. Communism is specifically a self-professed atheistic movement and communism as exercised by the aforementioned murdered tens of millions.

The Inquisition by comparison is child's play (I think you're talking about a couple thousand). The Roman Catholic church is broken and has been for a very long time. It is why WASPs were unhappy about the large Catholic migration to this country in the past and why they worried about a Catholic president (something I'm sure you agree with .

The abuse of Christianity may be what Hitchens, you and I can agree on. But you and Hitchens conflate atrocities with the teachings of Christ as a natural by product incorrectly. So that you understand better I should explain that you two are correctly meaning to complain about human nature. Universal atheism will not cure that. As a matter of fact the evidence exists that atheism is the root of greater death and destruction than real faith.

Real faith began when the Protestant Reformation demanded that the Bible be written in the vernacular. That is when people began to learn to read and write. That is when people learned that God wanted a personal relationship with individuals and not through intermediaries like priests and kings. Christian faith is at the root of literacy and individual freedom in this culture. Being able to read the Bible you get that you have no need for priests and kings. And whether you like it or not human nature of the uneducated is to have priests and kings even in a highly technologically advanced culture such as as our own.

spike

 

[HUNGHUGE11X7]

For atheists and agnostics here I got a question . Who is to you the coolest atheist ? To me is Christopher Hitchens. The way he owns religious guys in debates is awesome .

I would have to say HITCHENS as well . His debate and clever repartee is brilliant . Dawkins is good but too overzealous .



HH

 

[B_bi_mmf]

I would have to say HITCHENS as well . His debate and clever repartee is brilliant . Dawkins is good but too overzealous .

I don't think that there is any such thing as overzealousness is critiquing the looniness and destructiveness that is religion.

Yes, as Dawkins says, religious training is a form of child abuse.