The summer 2011 totally legitimate and like official atheist thread, endorsed too

[Quarterquack]

Well, macky, you have those arguments with your brother, I have them with my mother. I finally broke her down a few weeks ago and got her to concede to the point that "Neither of us can prove either side without more time."

For the record, darkstate01, my mother insists she saw the virgin Mary. As did hundreds of thousands of others. The event is widely known: http://www.zeitun-eg.org/stmaridx.htm .

Both my parents saw it. All four of my grandparents saw it. All of them insist that while all they saw was a light, they couldn't figure out a shape or face, while in the "pictures" it's clear that there was a face. Some doctoring happened somewhere, but something odd did happen years ago on the top of that church. There are literally hundreds of thousands of eye witness reports, pictures of doves flying in the middle of the night, and a light was seen by a significant part of my immediate family just hovering/wandering.

I keep getting pushed the question "What is it we saw, and don't say lasers because this was in the 60's! Lasers were not that advanced!" To which my answer is always "I don't know. I won't be afraid to admit my ignorance. However, don't just "logically" jump from seeing a light to the existence of a deity based on what you saw and your prerequisite knowledge. If I had told someone that what they saw was a toe of a massive monster in the sky, and they believed it, it does NOT make it true."

[OlegL]

For the record, darkstate01, my mother insists she saw the virgin Mary. As did hundreds of thousands of others. The event is widely known: http://www.zeitun-eg.org/stmaridx.htm .

Both my parents saw it. All four of my grandparents saw it.

Rofl, I am sure people never saw Virgin Mary in Cairo in 1968. Your mother and your grandparents never saw her. I don't know what that event was, but I am sure it didn't have anything to do with Virgin Mary.

[999969999]

Dude, didn't we already discuss it in the other thread? We need the concept of God because according to the great philosopher Kant, if there is no God, then we are allowed to do things that are immoral; we are allowed not to listen to our conscience if there is no God. Therefore, we need God because we need to fear someone. We need God if we don't want relative morality, but want absolute morality.

You may need him; millions of us do not however. If we "need to fear someone", how do you explain how millions of atheists do just fine without... it?

EDIT: Don't answer that. The fact of evolution and the farce that is religion is so blatantly obvious to me. I don't even like having this discussion with people I like, and in real life. I can't be fucked to discuss this again on a forum.

I agree. Arguing about religion is a complete waste of time. And on that note, here are some quotes about time that I find interesting...

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted. ~Ruth E. Renkl

You may delay, but time will not. ~Benjamin Franklin

Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live. ~Nicolas de Chamfort

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may;
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
~Robert Herrick


I try to treat each evening and weekend as little slices of retirement because no one is guaranteed a lengthy one at the end of their career. ~Mike Hammar


The more side roads you stop to explore, the less likely that life will pass you by. ~Robert Brault


If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days. ~Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Each day is an opportunity to travel back into tomorrow's past and change it. ~Robert Brault

If you could travel back in time to the present moment, what would you do differently? ~Robert Brault



Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got. ~Art Buchwald

If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You have another chance. ~Andrea Boydston


Life is always walking up to us and saying, "Come on in, the living's fine," and what do we do? Back off and take its picture. ~Russell Baker


There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want. ~Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes


What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Remember you must die whether you sit about moping all day long or whether on feast days you stretch out in a green field, happy with a bottle of Falernian from your innermost cellar. ~Horace


Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them. ~Dion Boucicault

Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. ~Author Unknown

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. ~Rabindranath Tagore

The question for each man is not what he would do if he had the means, time, influence, and educational advantages, but what he will do with the things he has. ~Hamilton


Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying. ~Christian Furchtegott Gellert


Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Later never exists. ~Author Unknown


Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time. ~Johann von Goethe

That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet.
~Emily Dickinson


Let us endeavor to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. ~Mark Twain


Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. ~Allen Saunders, 1957


The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrevocable. ~Lord Chesterfield

Lost time is never found again. ~Benjamin Franklin


The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone. ~Harriet Beecher Stowe, Little Foxes, 1865

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. ~William Shakespeare


Only that day dawns to which we are awake. ~Henry David Thoreau


Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop to look around once in a while you could miss it. ~From the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off

The future has a way of arriving unannounced. ~George F. Will

Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.
~Henry Austin Dobson

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. ~Hector Berlioz

You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now. ~Joan Baez

The follies which a man regrets most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity. ~Helen Rowland

What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal. ~John Howe

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it. ~Author unknown, sometimes attributed to W.M. Lewis

Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons. ~Ruth Ann Schabacker

The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there. ~Monica Baldwin

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance. ~Japanese Proverb

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion. ~Author Unknown

Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. ~Charles Richards

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone is just waiting. ~Dr. Seuss

Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. ~Chinese Proverb

Live every day as if it were your last and then some day you'll be right. ~H.H. "Breaker" Morant

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive. ~Elbert Hubbard

As you grow older, you'll find the only things you regret are the things you didn't do. ~Zachary Scott

Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you. ~Annie Dillard

Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today. ~James Dean

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. ~Stephen Vincent Benét

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. ~George Santayana, "War Shrines," Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies, 1922

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. ~Fr. Alfred D'Souza

Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead. ~Scottish Proverb


I'm less interested in why we're here. I'm wholly devoted to while we're here. ~Erika Harris

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see. ~John Burroughs

You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. ~Charles Buxton

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
Garrison Keillor
US humorist & radio broadcaster (1942 - )

[mjmacky]

9's, would you at least clean up your post so that it doesn't look so sloppy? Also, not surprised that you managed to avoid writing your own narrative again.

[999969999]

9's, would you at least clean up your post so that it doesn't look so sloppy? Also, not surprised that you managed to avoid writing your own narrative again.

Oh, come on! Can't you at least appreciate that these are some very interesting quotes? Far more interesting than anything I could write on my own at this point. At least I am interesting in learning from these other people, and I'm willing to listen to what they had to say.

[mjmacky]

9's, would you at least clean up your post so that it doesn't look so sloppy? Also, not surprised that you managed to avoid writing your own narrative again.

Oh, come on! Can't you at least appreciate that these are some very interesting quotes? Far more interesting than anything I could write on my own at this point. At least I am interesting in learning from these other people, and I'm willing to listen to what they had to say.

First, I've never really heard you make a point and have no idea if it would be more interesting, so I'll have to take you at your word on that issue.

Your long post has all kinds of awkward line breaks and shifting between single space and double space. It's too sloppy to even bother reading. You'll have to learn sometime (and don't take it at superficial value), but presentation matters.

[IdolEyes787]

God is an idea , therefore God exists. Heaven on the other hand is an aspiration so it's reality is a lot less certain.
Btw the church/organized religion is an institution and as so finite and completely separate from the idea of God.

[megabyteme]

God is an idea , therefore God exists. Heaven on the other hand is an aspiration so it's reality is a lot less certain.
Btw the church/organized religion is an institution and as so finite and completely separate from the idea of God.

I agree that God is an idea, but I typically do not see ideas "existing" unless there is some way to manifest that idea. How does this concept of God take form from that idea?

[mjmacky]

God is an idea , therefore God exists. Heaven on the other hand is an aspiration so it's reality is a lot less certain.
Btw the church/organized religion is an institution and as so finite and completely separate from the idea of God.

Not so fast. I may define god as an idea, but a theist would define him as their supreme master that likes to play with its human toys. Therefore, you can't say god exists with blanket logic. Heaven and Eden can be very specific or general terms equated with paradise, so I think context matters here too.

OK, so about the church. When I wanted to remain a believer, but had some issues with some of the concepts, I broke away from the church. Mostly because the people there were not just limited in their capacity to address my concerns, but seemed to actively try to sabotage it. I think my move to agnosticism and atheism was delayed due to my ties with church. In terms of relativism, I could find more respect for devout believers who do not subscribe to church visitation than the ones who do. It's just the nuttiest and most fervent believers have that sort of mob mentality, mostly due to reinforcement of synthesized reality among the community they grow at those places.

[A]

God exists, you can't prove otherwise. God doesn't exist, you can't prove otherwise. I exist, therefore I am.