Originally posted by The Thinker
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They Are Going After The Churches:
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"The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy."
GK Chesterton; Orthodoxy
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Originally posted by The Thinker View PostAtheistic members of AA are indeed forced to act against their conscience. The 12 steps are:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
This makes no sense when you think of your group as a higher power. In public schools children were often pressured and coerced into prayer. It took a supreme court case to strike that down. And the 10 commandments are forcing atheists to acknowledge religious laws that are incompatible with our Constitution. Would you like it if only the 5 pillars of Islam were written out on every US courthouse?
Also:
"The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy."
GK Chesterton; Orthodoxy
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post"forced down the throats"....Blog: Atheism and the City
If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostI'm on your side - I'm very critical of liberals.Blog: Atheism and the City
If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.
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Originally posted by Adrift View PostNo he hasn't.Blog: Atheism and the City
If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.
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Originally posted by seer View PostYes I did avoid the trilemma, you even admitted it - if not which horn was I impaled on? The objective/subjective thing was never the core of my argument. So again, which horn did I remain impaled on - be specific.Blog: Atheism and the City
If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.
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Originally posted by seer View PostFirst, I never saw anyone coerced to pray, it simply was not a big deal - especially for kids. Second, the Ten Commands are not inconsistent with the Founding of this Nation build on the premise that our rights came from God, and the fact that Christianity had a historical place in the American experience from the Pilgrims forward that no other Religion had. And not one Founder would have believed that prayer in School would have violated the Constitution - that came from liberal courts two hundred years later.
To your second point, yes the 10 commandments are incompatible with the separation of church and state, and freedom of and from religion. The first commandment is that there shall be no other gods besides the Christian one. That is flat out unconstitutional. Keeping the sabbath is a religious law. That is flat out unconstitutional. Not making ungraven images: That is flat out unconstitutional. Rules against blasphemy violates the first amendment of free speech. That is flat out unconstitutional. Thought crimes against coveting your neighbor is also flat out unconstitutional. The 10 commandments are just not compatible with the Constitution and secular democracy and have no place on government property.
By the way America is NOT a Christian nation:
https://youtu.be/z943vG7FT7g?t=2m52sBlog: Atheism and the City
If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.
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Originally posted by lilpixieofterror View PostToo bad AA isn't the only alcoholic abuse assistance place there is, eh? Who cares though because your hatred is in control and you'll throw up anything and everything you can because you just don't care about the facts before you. Such as the fact most drug abuse programs, have pretty low success rates too and plenty do not have religious elements involved. Drug abuse, rather it be alcohol or any other drug, is actually a very hard thing to overcome that few drug abusers will ever recover from.Blog: Atheism and the City
If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.
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Originally posted by NorrinRadd View PostThe fact that the Ten Commandments are *displayed* does not in any way constitute an "establishment" of a particular religion, and the fact that you are "forced" to acknowledge them -- ONLY in the sense of NOTICING THEIR EXISTENCE -- does not in any way harm your free exercise of non-religion.Blog: Atheism and the City
If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.
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Originally posted by The Thinker View PostI admitted it? Where? Your views were all over the place. At some points you got horned that morality is arbitrarily decided by god. At other times you admitted your views were circular. So at different times you were impaled by different horns.Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s
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Originally posted by The Thinker View PostHow do you know they weren't coerced? If they go along with it it will appear as if they aren't, because they're conforming under pressure. There are 8 states where it is technically illegal for atheists to hold public office because all public officials have to acknowledge a god or an afterlife. That is religion being forced down the throat of an atheist and is flat out unconstitutional. If it wasn't for secular activists who are working hard to repeal these laws, this would continue today. Why don't I hear you complaining about issues like this since you claim to care so much about freedom and the Constitution? Do you support an absolute separation of church and state? Yes or no?
To your second point, yes the 10 commandments are incompatible with the separation of church and state, and freedom of and from religion. The first commandment is that there shall be no other gods besides the Christian one. That is flat out unconstitutional. Keeping the sabbath is a religious law. That is flat out unconstitutional. Not making ungraven images: That is flat out unconstitutional. Rules against blasphemy violates the first amendment of free speech. That is flat out unconstitutional. Thought crimes against coveting your neighbor is also flat out unconstitutional. The 10 commandments are just not compatible with the Constitution and secular democracy and have no place on government property.
By the way America is NOT a Christian nation:
https://youtu.be/z943vG7FT7g?t=2m52s
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Originally posted by The Thinker View PostOK so let's have all US courthouses publicly display the 9 stantanic statements instead. You should have no problem with this since according to you, it "does not in any way constitute an "establishment" of a particular religion."
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Originally posted by The Thinker View PostTo your second point, yes the 10 commandments are incompatible with the separation of church and state, and freedom of and from religion. The first commandment is that there shall be no other gods besides the Christian one. That is flat out unconstitutional. Keeping the sabbath is a religious law. That is flat out unconstitutional. Not making ungraven images: That is flat out unconstitutional. Rules against blasphemy violates the first amendment of free speech. That is flat out unconstitutional. Thought crimes against coveting your neighbor is also flat out unconstitutional. The 10 commandments are just not compatible with the Constitution and secular democracy and have no place on government property.
The Continental-Confederation Congress, a legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789, contained an extraordinary number of deeply religious men. The amount of energy that Congress invested in encouraging the practice of religion in the new nation exceeded that expended by any subsequent American national government. Although the Articles of Confederation did not officially authorize Congress to concern itself with religion, the citizenry did not object to such activities. This lack of objection suggests that both the legislators and the public considered it appropriate for the national government to promote a nondenominational, nonpolemical Christianity.
Congress appointed chaplains for itself and the armed forces, sponsored the publication of a Bible, imposed Christian morality on the armed forces, and granted public lands to promote Christianity among the Indians. National days of thanksgiving and of "humiliation, fasting, and prayer" were proclaimed by Congress at least twice a year throughout the war. Congress was guided by "covenant theology," a Reformation doctrine especially dear to New England Puritans, which held that God bound himself in an agreement with a nation and its people. This agreement stipulated that they "should be prosperous or afflicted, according as their general Obedience or Disobedience thereto appears." Wars and revolutions were, accordingly, considered afflictions, as divine punishments for sin, from which a nation could rescue itself by repentance and reformation.
The first national government of the United States, was convinced that the "public prosperity" of a society depended on the vitality of its religion. Nothing less than a "spirit of universal reformation among all ranks and degrees of our citizens," Congress declared to the American people, would "make us a holy, that so we may be a happy people."
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel04.htmlDo you support an absolute separation of church and state? Yes or no?Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s
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Originally posted by seer View PostNope, I wasn't. You agreed that if God's commands were grounded in His immutable moral character then they were not arbitrary. You did say that they were circular, but then I said if they were, then all moral theories end up in a circle - including YOURS. So if a circular argument makes my view untenable it would also make your theory untenable. Hoisted on your own petard.
You admitted your view was circular at some point, and if you claim mine is too, then you are in no position to claim your view is any better than mine, and the theist and atheist would be equal on grounding morality. Yet you still act as if you have a better and more logically grounded view than the atheist does.Blog: Atheism and the City
If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.
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