Posted on 10/20/2009 3:41:00 PM PDT by guitarplayer1953
Coalition of Reason An advertisement that promotes atheism will run in a dozen subway stations in Manhattan for a month starting next Monday.
Atheism is coming to the subway — or at least subway ads promoting it are.
Starting next Monday, a coalition of local groups will run a monthlong advertising campaign in a dozen Manhattan subway stations with the slogan “A Million New Yorkers Are Good Without God. Are You?” The posters also advertise the Web site BigAppleCoR.org, which provides a listing of local groups affiliated with the Coalition of Reason, the umbrella organization that coordinated the campaign.
(Excerpt) Read more at cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Without God we get White House czars and Communications directors who think Mao was a wonderful “philosopher” and that fact he murdered and slaughtered 70 million people to be immaterial, after all, who are we to judge?
Good without God ay? Only a liberal educated fool would write such a book. No thanks... all praise and honor goes to the Almighty Wonderful God of the universe!
Sadly ironic.
An atheist can’t consistently discuss goodness, nor even the trying to convince anyone of anything.
Yet they’re compelled.
Study for abnormal psychology, perhaps.
I think this will backfire on the atheists. Most non-believers don’t actively disbelieve in God as much as they simply don’t think about him. These ads will likely get some unbelievers and lukewarm believers to think about God, and perhaps seek Him. If any intellectually honest person considers the existance of a Creator, he will undoubtedly realize that logic dictates that their must be one.
I think radical atheists like these, “doth protest too much”. If someone truly does not believe in God, he will not care to discuss or even think about the issue. He will simply, quietly smirk at those silly, religious people, or think “If it makes them happy, what is it to me if they hold onto their superstitions.”
Deep down, radical, activist atheists KNOW there is a God and are desperately striving to escape their accountability to Him.
Good without Santa Claus, the Boogie Man, and God.
2 Timothy 3
“Difficult Times Will Come”
1.But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2.For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3.unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4.treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5.holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.
However, it would also seem that Einstein was not an atheist, since he also complained about being put into that camp:
"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."
"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."
Einstein also stated: “I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth.”
I think that’s a pretty definite “No.”
Why would atheists need to be evangelical?
Interesting. Of course, I assume that, being reality-based, they have comprehensive factual support for their claims that (a) there are a million atheists in the metropolitan New York area and (b) said individuals are in fact on a 24/7/365 basis perfectly good without God. I particularly look forward to the evidence for (b).
The advertisement assumes that we know the answer to all these meta-ethical questions, and that “good” means the same to all people. None of this is true. What is “good” for an Atheist may not be “good” for a Christian. In fact, many things that an Atheist would call good, a Christian might call bad or evil. Take the issues of abortion, war, homosexuality, and adultery for instance. I would even go so far as to speculate that there is disagreement among Atheists as to what is good.
Secondly, it is stupid for Theists or Atheists to fight over who is morally superior. The facts are that Theists and Atheists are guilty of horrible acts. Atheists are just as capable of being moral as a Christian is capable of being moral. Of course, the reasons for being moral are motivated by different motivations. If morality simply means that that an individual is not engaged in murdering, raping, and robbing his neighbor, being “good” is not that difficult.
Finally, as a Christian, I believe that God has written his law in our hearts, whether we are Theists or Atheists. There is something in us that instinctively knows right from wrong.
I'm delighted that you don't have to be a theist in order to be good. Imagine what our world would look like it that wasn't true.
Do you need threats of torture from on high to help other people, or even merely avoid harming them?
Obama, with his various czars, doesn't care to make the true beliefs of his "advisors" known. It is only by other's investigations that their true colors come out and we're not liking what we are seeing. There is always an ulterior motive to everything they do.
No...but the question is how and who defines what is "good"? I.e.; helping other people, to me, may mean abetting a suicide. Handing the gun to a depressed person and encouraging them to put themselves out of their misery. Would everyone consider this a "good" act on my part? Like I said, without objective truth, all things must be subjective and relative. Everyone doing what is right "In their own eyes.". Sound familiar?
Strength in Numbers (SIN)
An atheist can be president if they get enough electoral votes. So this is a straw man argument for them.
Absolutely, but even he knows that an admitted atheist (or probably Muslim, at this point) could not ever get that far. He's bemoaning the fact that Americans are prejudiced (in his eyes) against anyone who isn't Christian.
Believers do “right in their own eyes” too, but attaching their concept of good to a bloodthirsty horror fantasy of retribution.
Well....this believer has a loving, personal heavenly Father who created her and wants what is best for her and all mankind. He has laid out for us, through his word, the Bible, what is good and noble, just and wise. And that the "fear (reverence) of God is the beginning of wisdom." I try to live a life that honors God not because I fear eternal damnation but because he has created in me a new heart that desires and seeks his will.
My eternal salvation is sure, not because I try to be good, but because of the love and grace of God given to me by faith in the sacrifice Jesus Christ made for us on the cross. We love him because He first loved us.
So when are the atheists and muzzies gonna have it out with each other? Or are they going to keep their neat little quasi-alliance going till they do away with the rest of us?
Who said anything about "torture," from on high or from any other quarter?
First of all, there is no such thing as an independent, abstract "good" (or "evil" either). Good and evil are what they are via Divine decree. No Divine decree, nothing is right or wrong.
Second of all, the purpose of "doing good" is submission to the Creator and the unleashing of spiritual forces in the spiritual worlds (good actions unleash good forces, and evil ones unleash evil forces). The absence of a Creator to submit to makes the whole thing meaningless.
I know..and that was what almost 50 years ago? We have at least one Muslim in congress now along with many, many Catholics, LDS and others. I still think an outright Atheist would not get very far in the primaries for president, but America IS drifting further away from the Christian principles that established her. Not for the good...I might add.
Before I say anything else, please pay attention to this: this post is non-hostile. Also note that I'm on your side in this thread.
But now, having said all that, I must point out that from the very beginning, the Founding Fathers themselves, there were two political philosophies--the Hamiltonian (strong central government, implied powers) and the Jeffersonian (weak central government, enumerated powers). The political tradition you are condemning is the Hamiltonian tradition which was there from the beginning. It was not the creation of early twentieth century magnates.
Before there was the Federal Reserve there was the First Bank of the United States, signed into law by George Washington himself (and before that, there was the Bank of North America under the Articles of Confederation). The Federalists begat the Whigs who begat the Republicans who are the traditional party of American conservatism (as was Federalism and Whiggery prior to that).
Now maybe Hamiltonianism is in error. I am not going to argue that with you (though it's hard to see how the United States would have developed if the Jeffersonians had had their way). But the old East Coast families whom you seem to be identifying with liberalism were originally conservative. The "Eastern liberal establishment" actually started out as the "Eastern conservative establishment," believe it or not. Do you regard Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, McKinley, Taft (Teddy Roosevelt was an exception), Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover as left wingers?
Now I do not deny for one minute that today's Left is strongest in the very areas of the country (Northeast and West Coast) that was historically Federalist/Whig/Republican, and that today's conservatives are concentrated in the parts of the country the Democrats and Populists once dominated. But that does not make McKinley a liberal, or William Jennings Bryan and his cohorts conservatives.
I respect your position on these issues but I simply want to state my own that to identify modern conservatism with late nineteenth century Populism (and its successor, early twentieth century Progressivism) is a grave mistake.
well...maybe your life can be good without god....but most definitly NOT your death!
sorry, didn’t mean you.
Thats Ok we all jump to conclusions at times Some times it helps me to try and see what the intent of a comment is or a question and then respond to it. I’ve eaten plenty of crow here FR. And it does not taste that good no matter how you cook it.
ROMANS 3:9-18 says.....
9. What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin;
10. as it is written, “THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;
11. THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS,
THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;
12. ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS;
THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD,
THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”
13. “THEIR THROAT IS AN OPEN GRAVE,
WITH THEIR TONGUES THEY KEEP DECEIVING,”
“THE POISON OF ASPS IS UNDER THEIR LIPS”;
14. “WHOSE MOUTH IS FULL OF CURSING AND BITTERNESS”;
15. “THEIR FEET ARE SWIFT TO SHED BLOOD,
16. DESTRUCTION AND MISERY ARE IN THEIR PATHS,
17. AND THE PATH OF PEACE THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN.”
18. “THERE IS NO FEAR OF GOD BEFORE THEIR EYES.”
Most people don’t like being preached to. Regardless, the source.
The post was discussion are the Atheist being preachy? When you see a speed limit sign do you feel like your being preached at? Are advertisements preaching? Don’t give your opinion to anyone from now on they may fell that your preaching to them.
When they say “good” they really mean “feeling good about myself”.
Very few atheists maintain a coherent system of ethics and it is impossible for an atheist to hold morals without being contradictory.
“Good” is feeling good about themselves and arbitrarily following the last remaining moral traditions.
Atheist idea of good:
not killing foreigners
not stealing from people you know
not raping strangers
whooo I’m impressed
Liberal atheists (the overwhelming majority of atheists) use “good” when describing political correctness.
good=politically correct
bad=traditional western values
I'm sure that in the 1920's, nobody thought a black man could ever be president. I think the prospects for a 'militant, in-your-face, anti-Christian atheist' becoming president are extremely remote for the foreseeable future, but an agnostic could be elected sometime later in our lives.
“Do you need threats of torture from on high to help other people, or even merely avoid harming them?”
Martin Luther said no:
“Outwardly you keep the law with works out of fear of punishment or love of gain. Likewise you do everything without free desire and love of the law; you act out of aversion and force. You’d rather act otherwise if the law didn’t exist. It follows, then, that you, in the depths of your heart, are an enemy of the law. What do you mean, therefore, by teaching another not to steal, when you, in the depths of your heart, are a thief and would be one outwardly too, if you dared. (Of course, outward work doesn’t last long with such hypocrites.) So then, you teach others but not yourself; you don’t even know what you are teaching. You’ve never understood the law rightly. Furthermore, the law increases sin, as St. Paul says in chapter 5. That is because a person becomes more and more an enemy of the law the more it demands of him what he can’t possibly do.
In chapter 7, St. Paul says, “The law is spiritual.” What does that mean? If the law were physical, then it could be satisfied by works, but since it is spiritual, no one can satisfy it unless everything he does springs from the depths of the heart. But no one can give such a heart except the Spirit of God, who makes the person be like the law, so that he actually conceives a heartfelt longing for the law and henceforward does everything, not through fear or coercion, but from a free heart. Such a law is spiritual since it can only be loved and fulfilled by such a heart and such a spirit. If the Spirit is not in the heart, then there remain sin, aversion and enmity against the law, which in itself is good, just and holy.
You must get used to the idea that it is one thing to do the works of the law and quite another to fulfill it. The works of the law are every thing that a person does or can do of his own free will and by his own powers to obey the law. But because in doing such works the heart abhors the law and yet is forced to obey it, the works are a total loss and are completely useless. That is what St. Paul means in chapter 3 when he says, “No human being is justified before God through the works of the law.” From this you can see that the schoolmasters and sophists are seducers when they teach that you can prepare yourself for grace by means of works. How can anybody prepare himself for good by means of works if he does no good work except with aversion and constraint in his heart? How can such a work please God, if it proceeds from an averse and unwilling heart?”
However, you will notice he also argues that there are no good works apart from God, since the nonbeliever acts in rebellion to the Creator. You can give all your money to the poor - a good deed by itself - without pleasing God, if you are still a rebel against God.
boatbums is correct. Unless you define what is good, this question cannot be answered intelligently.
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