New Atheist Billboard in San Diego Urges 'Personal Relationship With Reality'

No, It is true.

The vast majority of our founding fathers were christians, and the vast majority of Americans are christians. Americans elect representatives to create laws that are consistent with their beliefs.

 

I feel your pain.

 

That is not what I was arguing about (albeit you are not right there either).

 

No, Im right.

Our founding fathers didnt institute sharia law, on purpose.

 

Which say nothing at all about Judaism or Christianity?

 

Of course they do.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Our founding fathers were mostly christians, and their creator is a direct reference to the christian god.

They werent talking about their mothers who made a choice to allow them to be born.

They werent talking about Muhammad.

They werent talking about Budda.

Its pretty straight forward, unless youre seeking to distort history.

 

How many is 'mostly'?

What is a 'Christian god'?

 

How is that any more insulting than a religious billboard that tells people they will suffer for eternity unless they repent?

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How about all the churches I see paying for billboard spaces?

Pot, meet kettle, I think you have a lot in common.

 

They also didn't give us a christian theocracy, which they could have done, and considering the deeply held human superstitions at the time, probably would have been accepted by a majority of the public.

 

I never said there was a difference or that it was any more or less insulting than anything else.

The topic is atheist advertisements, so I was commenting about how I feel about these atheist advertisements. I never excused or justified any ridicule against atheists.. In fact I condemned it back on page 1.

I'll tell you the same thing as I told ctrl.. Please read the thread before you accuse people of double standards.

 

And the fact that they used the phrase "their Creator" is very clear evidence that their intent was to be completely neutral as to what that Creator was. They could have said God, and considering the times it's almost shocking that they didn't. BUT, they didn't, instead choosing to leave it to individuals to interpret who or what that Creator was on their own. I believe in a Creator. But our true Source and the gawd of the buybull are two ENTIRELY different things.

 

No, you cannot. You can get social psychologists who want to pretend you can. But they're still stuck describing what they observe and applying to preexisting ethical ideas. How do we know that despair, violence, torture, and injustice are bad? I say they're good and we should have more of them; prove me wrong, using social psychology.

 

No one claimed they did.

The freedom of religion is in the bill of rights. It was put there because the vast majority of Colonists moved to America to escape religious persecution.

 

They inflict psychological damage on both the recipient and the person doing the act.

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That's a lie. The vast majority of colonists came to America to get rich.

 

I agree with your point but out of curiosity, why do you misspell the words god and bible? I'm assuming it's intentional and wondering why.

 

Nope, Im telling the truth.

America as a Religious Refuge:
The Seventeenth Century

history of religious conflict in the United States - Stanford University

History of Religion in America

 

Because I don't respect the entity described as "God" in the "Bible", and my very intentional misspellings are intended to demonstrate that disrespect. I believe holding on to dogmatic religions such as christianity and islam, rather than being a good thing for our spiritual development, is in fact, holding us back.

Perhaps the words of the Dalai Lama said it better than me:
All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.

 

So the Dalai Lama taught you to disrespect the religion of another?

I think you need to go back and get some more learn'n

 

Why would I respect beliefs and dogma that I know to be false?

 

So what? I say psychological damage is a good thing. Misery is good. Unhappiness for the human race is good. Prove me wrong.

 

Oh thats easy. Because you claim to be follower of the Dalai Lama, yet you completely disregard his most basic teachings.

His Holiness is the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. He frequently states that his life is guided by three major commitments: the promotion of basic human values or secular ethics in the interest of human happiness, the fostering of inter-religious harmony and the welfare of the Tibetan people, focusing on the survival of their identity, culture and religion.

 

No, I didn't, and while I have immense respect for him, and think he, more than any other human, likely has a better grasp on real spirituality than any of the rest of us, I am not a "follower". I am not Tibetan. Though I'm told my philosophies are very close to Buddhism, I haven't studied it enough to know if that's true. If I am a Buddhist, it's completely by accident and unknown to me.

I would take it a step further. I'd prefer to see the end of false, dogmatic religions entirely, not just harmonious coexistence. Though that would be better than nothing.

 

There is a lot of truth to the OP. However, what is unknown may turn out in part to be unknowable by the human mind. And in that case you're much better off having a religion to buffer you. Some truths in what-we-have-yet-to-know or may-never-know are so utterly shattering that just knowing them can turn a person insane.

Yes, I got a glimpse of some of the unknown as a near-death experience and let me just say for the record that the vast majority of people could simply not handle the truth. Best to go to church on Sunday or watch the daisies grow in a mountain meadow...much much better than confronting some of the stuff we don't know..

Or "Knowledge is a cup of tea best sipped very very ....sloooooooooooowwwwwwwwlyyy...." When it comes to the deeper layers of what underlies reality. Reality itself isn't as real as you think. That's as much as I'm going to say.

 

I think that's true to an extent, but it's changing rapidly. I believe future history books will note that this time was, more or less, the beginning of a great period of enlightenment.

 

Harm doesn't even meet the dictionary definition of good.