http://ecademy.agnesscott.edu/~lriddle/ifs/ksnow/ksnow.htm
This representation, as the iterations proceed, has physically limited area, but an infinite outer boundary. God?
Posted on 05/18/2007 9:06:58 AM PDT by Jakarta ex-pat
ROOT OF ALL EVIL?
THE God Delusion - based on Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion - is the best documentary I've ever seen. And, I imagine, will ever see. No jokes. No smart-arse cracks. No witty asides.
Dawkins is a scientist and passionate atheist who has produced a stunning, thoroughly researched and expertly executed work that flatly denies the existence of God and illustrates what a destructive force religion is. Even in its mildest form. This provocative and entertaining ride will have some believers coming out the other end as atheists. And every Bible basher, Torah toter and Koran carrier calling the ABC to complain.
As I watched this masterpiece unfold, I couldn't remember the last time I had seen something so brilliant on the idiot box. Dawkins unapologetically refuses to treat religion differently to any other subject. There is no tiptoeing in fear of "offending" anyone (how you can offend people with truth is beyond me). Dawkins has harnessed his skill as a scientist, his hunger for truth and his rage to prove that God is a delusion that's infecting the world. He refers to "the process of non-thinking called faith" and bemoans "that the idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe". He liberates the viewer with the conclusion that "atheism is life-affirming in a way religion can never be".
Atheists will watch this show and feel as if they have died and gone to heaven as they see a bloke far more smarterer than themselves poke that animal in the cage. The fundamentalists, the evangelicals, the dabblers and the moderates all cop it. Dawkins dismembers the lot with a scalpel. It's intoxicating for born-again atheists like myself. I have taken the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my Lord and personal saviour. That's right. I am a Pastafarian.
Atheism is, it seems, the new black. Dawkins' offering will not simply be preaching to the converted but actually convert fence-sitters with truth and reason.
Dawkins describes the God of the Old Testament as "the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous and proud of it. Petty, vindictive, unforgiving and racist. An ethnic cleanser urging his people on to acts of genocide."
Then Moses cops it. Dawkins quotes a Bible story and asks: "How is this story morally distinguishable from Hitler's rape of Poland or Saddam Hussein's massacre of the Kurds or the Marsh Arabs?"
Dawkins' masterful command of the language and his glorious Britishness is a delight throughout: "So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual. Nobody not bought up in the faith could reach to any verdict other than barking mad." He tells us that "killing for God is not just hideous murder but utterly ridiculous".
On Sunday night, if you listen carefully, you'll hear atheists all over Australia leaning back in their chairs, putting their feet on the coffee table and saying, "I'm with him." And I'll be one of them.
The other people’s glasses were certainly getting filled. But not with whiskey.
:::rolls eyes:::
There, fixed it.
There are people like you describe.Yet on the flip side,there are also those who,while denying God,seem to be the most in need of”Him”.I know a guy like that at work.He openly curses God and is extremely blasphemous.Yet inside he is more like a hurt little child who seeks something beyond the betrayals of other humans he has encountered.
I shiver when I think of a world in which the masses in particular become atheists.You would lose all social control and all aspects of traditional morality.People would loot,rape,pillage and burn without the necessary restraints religious morality brings to the table.This morality is essential or we will devolve into a Peggy Lee If Thats All There Is hedonism.
I do agree that certain educated,ethically astute individuals could lead a moral life without religion or the belief in a God concept.But NEVER the masses.
It certainly seems so when not considered in context. What the man is saying is that he believes Jesus is who He says He is, but does not have complete faith that Jesus will heal his son.
Thanks. I picked out a Spiderman band-aid...
Therein lies the reason why religions were invented, or rather more appropriately, why societies with a belief in consequences succeeded, while the others withered away. I’d like to believe that if people strip religion down to the extent that they realise the things that religion offers that seems to support society, then they may at last be able to incorporate the same without needing to believe in any irrational, supernatural entity. That social glue needn’t necessarily be belief, or religion.
Yes. It has been a long, empty search. The want is great, but the hopes are nearly non-existent.
Just ask the hard-core homos that were on DU after Jerry Falwell died. They'll explain it to you.
I don’t think your vision will ever come to pass.The need to believe in something beyond all the pain in this mortal world is just too intense.
I’m curious if you have investigated the NDE believers.Are their tales merely brain chemistry gone awack?Or is”the tunnel’and “the light”real?
I contend with out a God,life is pretty meaningless.I was a totally anti-religious person in my younger days.Both parents and most of my friends were deeply cynical.I came to God through mysticism and figuring out that the patterns in my life were much too interconnected to be mere coincidence.Like Cott,I believe there is nothing wrong in accepting a”free gift”,if indeed thats what lies beyond.
I think I am a much more”moral”person since I became a believer.I won’t even use the term”sinner”.Sinning in the way I used to”sin”just got plain boring.I started to look for something deeper.
Thats when I found”God”.
Boy! This video is hard to find on the Internet. Someone is active, taking it off sites. BUT, here it is..., at least for a while...
http://www.veoh.com/series/rootofallevil
It’s in two parts. You can download it and play it (as probably) a flash video file. I’m downloading it now.
Have fun!
We know very little about the various physiological processes that make the brain work as it is. NDE is probably akin to the kind of pleasure masochists and others obtain through strangulation, etc.
Besides, NDE, if looked at from the religious perspective, would be a totally absurd thing, that actually ridicules religion more than it encourages it. Why did this person get into the after-life and back? Wouldn’t that render the purpose of the life that had just been lived, again from the religious angle, meaningless?
The biochemical reactions in animal brains are very similar to that of human’s. Wouldn’t the thought of an animal experiencing the “afterlife” and being back, be absurd, in the view of religion?(read Abrahamic religion) Or maybe it’s just what I stated earlier, a dying brain squirting neuro-transmitters in one desperate attempt.
It’s easy to believe that the earth is flat, to gain the false knowledge of the limits to avoid. But it’s much more beautiful to realise that the earth is round, and thereby lose the fear of falling off its edge.
Dawkins biggest flaw is this. He believes in evolution, which places homo sapiens on the earth for 30,000+ years. He claims that religion has been the cause of most wars.
Christianity has been around for 2 thousand years, and Judaism has been around for 5,000 years. (6000 years since Adam)
Apparently, for 25,000 years, there was nothing but peace among men. According to all historical record, before Christianity and Judaism, there has been conflict.
He could argue that there were more primitive religions before that. I would submit atheism existed first, if man did not come from Adam and Eve, because if God is the invention of man, then there was a time that the concept of God did not exist.
So then, either atheism is the originator of conflict, and responsible for more years of conflict, or man has only been around for a few thousand years, and there is another reason for conflict.
I submit that wars are caused by weak leaders instilling fear in the ignorant for personal benefit, and strong leaders responding to that poor manipulation. Religion has been used to give the follower the hope of justification.
However, there have been times when the godly have been motivated to destroy evil. I suspect though, that hte number of holy challenges are fewer than human self-centered conflict.
Which begs me to ask, why did you find just one? Why not two? Or more? Pardon me if I sound rude, I am just curious. Maybe you just pieced together with whatever you could, the gulf between your earlier disbelief, and the notions of the believers which you liked to dispel. If you hadn't had the notion then, that the believers believed in this single god, and that this god was masculine, would you have come to the same conclusion as them, unguided?
Actually, the LOVE of money is the root of all evil.
http://ecademy.agnesscott.edu/~lriddle/ifs/ksnow/ksnow.htm
This representation, as the iterations proceed, has physically limited area, but an infinite outer boundary. God?
My One God discovery might have been merely the result of social conditioning-growing up in a Christian culture.I am OPEN to the possiblility of more than one God but don’t feel the need for multiple gods.
I think it was/is part of my quest and fervent desire to believe in something bigger than myself and the promise of either reincarnation or an afterlife of some kind.I am not a dogmatic Christian but simply cannot comprehend the end of my mortal existence.
Might be my huge ego speaking.I’m just”too important”to be dust in the wind.Yet throughout history,sages and visionaries from all cultures have felt the presence of a “God”.They can’t all be whackos.
That underlines the ultimate reason why people want to believe in the supernatural. The irony is that this fear will only last as long as one is alive. Billions of years went without your existence affecting it one lick. Odds are, so will billions more, after you, and me. I'd rather take pleasure in the assumption how lucky I must be, to be alive, for this tiny, tiny fraction of eternity, that these molecules that make me, came together in such a way, that together, they could think in unison and be awed by the very same!
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