How are the new atheists wrong?

They ignore the basic fact that religion is an ingrained part of human psychology.

Hence why even Neanderthals buried their dead with grave goods for the afterlife.

Also, if moderate religion was eliminated and it came down to religious extremists vs atheists, the atheists would get rekt everywhere except for China.

>>2220310
>ingrained part of human psychology

Many unpleasant things are ingrained deeply within us, doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to overcome

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>>2220302
>the bible is obvious mid east barbarism as seen by ISIS today (with some nice poetry sprinkled on top).

Statements like this are why #NewAtheism is a joke and if you need that joke explained to you then it's even funnier.

>>2220317
Not an argument

When it comes to ideas of justice, power, and organization of society it would seem the old testament is far closer to ISIS than enlightenment thought or anything to come after

>>2220313
I'm pretty sure humans are simply too smart to function without religion.

Like, all living things have survival instincts. Humans may be the only thing on earth smart enough to fully comprehend the idea of mortality and eternal oblivion. And we're the 1.0 model.

Religion keeps humans from acknowledging what's going to happen to them, which is a fundamentally healthy thing.

t. atheist

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>>2220313
>Many unpleasant things are ingrained deeply within us, doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to overcome
Let me guess. You're a commie.

>>2220338
Not really decided on ideology, or anything really, but I am certainly not a communist or marxist of any kind.

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>>2220320
Pretty interesting how #Enlightenment thought originated in countries with Christian backgrounds and how the first #Humanists were all Christian as well. It's almost like equating Christianity with Islam is misguided and lazy. Really makes you think.

>>2220362
Enlightenment came from a break down clergy monopoly of understanding and focusing more on personal faith and conviction. Enlightenment came from a break down of religious authority, God dying, not from religious convictions.

The same thing is seen in ancient Greece. Even jesuit Frederick Copleston attributed Greece's rich tradition of philosophy to a lacking of a clerical class or canon

>>2220302
they aren't wrong factually, but their tone and extremism is inappropriate.
they oversimplify the complexity of human experience and dismiss thousand of years of culture as worthless in a kind of vulgar rationalism, that leaves no room for an emotional experience of the world. their arguments against god also aren't new.

i agree that religion should not be accepted uncritically and religious fanaticism needs to be countered but it's just not true that religion is an evil in all of its forms. It's much more complex than that.

religion is something that connects us to our past and it can give comfort and meaning to our lives. also religion is defined by its practice, as such it is neither good nor bad and the same basic religion, even the same words in the same religious text, can be interpreted in vastly different ways. verses can be emphasizes, deemphasized or even complete ignored by certain traditions leading to vastly diverse practices within the same faith.

you can even find meaning in christian tradition and rituals without strictly believing in god and church doctrine.
what i'm trying to say is, religion is interesting and we shouldn't discount it too easily. in my opinion "haha, you believe in an imaginary skydaddy" is too simple an argument against a cultural tradition that has shaped civilizations over thousands of years.

>>2220411
So they're just too mean?

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>>2220366
The Roman church losing authority != God dying

And that was quite literally the result of religious convictions, picture related.

>>2220302
Look I wouldn't bother on 4chan. 90% of the time its just people shouting "i'm right you're wrong" and name calling.

>>2220474
It did start out with more religiousity in a sense, however, when the seal of "you can think of yourself" is broken eventually people will just disregard religion altogether

>>2220450
see, you're doing it again. reducing a nuanced statement to a snappy one-liner.

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>>2220478
>however, when the seal of "you can think of yourself" is broken eventually people will just disregard religion altogether

Any day now, right Voltaire?

>>2220302
King cuck athfagist

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>>2220302
>I know it's not cool on 4chan to express atheism, the arguments it uses are seen as tired and reddit.

Nah. 4chan is still an atheist site. The anti-atheism is all newfriends riding the trump wave if they're fundamentalist, russian astroturf if they're orthodox, DE losers Pao kicked off reddit if they're catholic.

>>2220510
He was too optimistic, but its clear that religion is dying in the most educated and developed countries in the world. Its spreading primarily because the uneducated and poor fuck like rabbits

>>2220310
I don't know about Harris, but Hitchens does not ignore this, he talks about it all the time, accepts it will likely never be gotten rid of (at least as long as we're still humans).

Not really sure how it's a point at all

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>calling the Four Horseman 'fedoras'

>>2220336
If that's the case, surely then they could at least simplify it and just believe in an afterlife that doesn't ask them to do shit like give money go to church and eat bread

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>>2220553
>The meek shall inherit the Earth.

>>2220584
meek /= black guy with ten kids

>>2220584
>wal mart clothes
>camo cap
>jean shorts

The average IQ of that room is probably close to the average age

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>>2220597
Said the scribe.

>>2220302
>I know it's not cool on 4chan to express atheism
a plurality of 4chan users are atheists. on this board in particular there are more atheists than all christian denominations. if you include the deists and pantheists which aren't that different world view wise then atheists are a majority

>>2220611
Obviously atheists are the majority, just as leftists are the majority. There aren't really conservatives or religious people on the internet (the real internet like Tumblr, 4chan, reddit, not twitter or facebook which is just an extension of real life). They only exist here in a LARP-ey and ironic sense

>>2220597
>lmao poor religious people are absolute scum except if they're muslim then they're OK #refugeewelcomes amirite

>>2220611
Don't forget that about a third of the Christians on /his/ believe in hypostatic union.

>>2220621
When did I defend rapefugees?

>>2220611
>>2220618
I think the vast majority in terms of politics or religion are people mainly indifferent to either.

Maybe I'm projecting my own thoughts, but I'd prefer to talk about whatever board I'm on not get into shit-flinging about politics/religion.

>>2220625
He's making the lazy assumption that atheists are left-wing.

>>2220629
This.

Most atheists are right-wing fascists.

>>2220643
Not sure where you are getting that, but in America being an atheist is almost always goes hand in hand with being lolbertarian or progressive

This short game proves athiests are literally illogical and have no valid arguments for their beliefs

http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/

>>2220717
How many times must this be refuted before you'll stop posting it?

>>2220717
what did any of that even have to do with god, he was never even mentioned til he got inserted at the end

>>2220717
>assumes Absolute Truth exists and is the A' of False, even if you fundamentally disagree with the assessment
Did they really think that would work?

>>2220643
go make a thread about it on /pol/ and see all the churchboys suck protestantism's dick

>>2220725
I have only seen this posted once and that was on another board.

>>2220748
So you are saying that its absolutely true that there are no absolute truths?

>>2220717
I went through this whole thing, absolute truth exists, logic exists, isn't made of matter, and then they're like BAM, god exists. How the fuck did they get that out of all the other stuff

>>2220797
http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/do-not-believe/

>>2220717

>Knowledge is justified true belief.

No it fucking isn't.

>>2220812
>http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/do-not-believe/
doesn't really explain anything very well desu... Why can't I account for absolute truth without god?

>>2220823
>Why can't I account for absolute truth without god?

How do you account for an immaterial and unchanging aboslute?

>>2220818
What is wrong with that definition?

>>2220828
How do you account for God?

>>2220302
1/2
I’ll focus on Christopher Hitchens because he’s the one who had the largest following. I don't know about anybody else on this site, but what annoyed me personally about Christopher Hitchens in particular was the way that he used his aggressive atheism as a method of achieving a near stratospheric ascension in societal importance, which he would never have achieved if he were to simply rely on his writing. The moment when he began to become extremely loud about his atheism closely coincided with when he changed from an almost literal champagne socialist, to the Bush administration's ad man to the middle brow. For the final decade of his life he went around campuses and other buildings aggressively proselytizing his non-belief, in the service... erm, what, exactly?

All he tended to do was walk up to the podium, say a couple zingers, display his fairly light knowledge of anything but the most basic ecumenical matters, and play to the emotions of his audience. I don't believe he was wrong, but I don't think that what he was fighting for was good either: religion has been a positive force in many people's life, and taking away one ideology in the service of another will simply mean that the new ideology will have to be poisoned.

>>2220839
2/whatever
But importantly, his anti-religious activism played hand in hand with his neo-conservative hawkishness, and he was one the worst. Islamic fighters and civilians alike in the increasing quagmire we call the Middle East weren't described in a complex manner, no, they were islamo-fascists: an easy to use portmanteau which brings to mind past events where we were good people fighting against objectively bad people.

Their Islamism is presumably meant to bring to mind the many Christians who made up the reactionary forces of the early 20th century: a truism that ignores the many Christians on both sides, and works both ways by giving comfortable secular people and excuse to distrust their fellow religious colleagues and friends by drawing up a helpful ready-made caricature of all religious people as stupid and freedom hating.

That’s part of why I distrust the new atheism movement in general: they use emotional arguments; their conclusions are nonsensical (‘if we got rid of religion, all the problems in the world would disappear,’ get a fucking grip); and since their ideology is built on such shaky intellectual grounds, it tends to take in the most weakly of society: frustrated young men who see Hitchens as a cool, charismatic guy and want to hate what he hates. Most of them are just as dumb and anti-intellectual, if not worse, than the people they hate.

>>2220828
because it being any other way is an automatic paradox, for the same reasons the 'game' initially said

>>2220831

Have you never heard of the Gettier Problems? The world has moved on since Plato. In large part the meaning of the word "justified" is extremely unclear, and you could base your reasoning as to something on any sort of absurd logic and come up to a correct conclusion in spite of it.

Here's a really simple example.

Someone asks you what time it is. You look at your watch, since that's how you usually tell the time. Unbeknownst to you, your watch froze exactly a day ago, you haven't checked it in the intervening time. You then give the correct answer.

You have a belief, it is true, and you have a justification for it, only a justification that is itself founded on an incorrect premise (namely, that your watch is accurate when it is in fact not accurate). Can you be said to know what time it is? What if it's even more out there. Someone asks you what time it is, and you give the (again, correct answer) because that's what your parrot shouts out at that exact moment, and you (stupidly and/or irrationally) think that's sufficient justification for knowing what time it is.

>>2220839
>>2220843
As an aside, I deeply admire Chomsky's refusal to speak about faith except in the most clinical and objective sense possible- he may decry some American politicians who deny climate change because of their beliefs and therefore stop important legislation getting through; but he's still open minded enough to speak about the good it does for so many people. He has also spoken out repeatedly about Liberation Theology and its good works in South America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEKy1yE8ntI

>>2220839
>>2220843
Intredasting, i feel i agree

>>2220857
I havent heard of them, what would be a better definition of knowledge.

>because it being any other way is an automatic paradox, for the same reasons the 'game' initially said

How could such things exist without a divine element?

>>2220771
>So you are saying that its absolutely true that there are no absolute truths?
I'm saying that "absolute truth" is a concept or phrase that may or may not (in other words, when you quote this post and ask "is thst absolutely true," refer to this part) correspond to anything other than the lingual framework that produced it in anything but the most metaphorical sense, not unlike "colorless green ideas sleep furiously." If you ask someone if they think absolute truth exists, and the try to force them into a dichotomy only possible if absolute truth is assumed to exist, why did you even ask the question in the first place?

>>2220881
>I haven't heard of them, what would be a better definition of knowledge.


There is no settled definition of 'knowledge' in epistomology. Cranking out a 2,000+ year old definition though, and treating at as an absolute basis on which all further argument hinges, is stupid.

>>2220894
>correspond to anything other than the lingual framework that produced it in anything but the most metaphorical sense, not unlike "colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

I dont follow

>If you ask someone if they think absolute truth exists, and the try to force them into a dichotomy only possible if absolute truth is assumed to exist, why did you even ask the question in the first place?

To demonstrate its logical necessity and how it cannot not exist.

>>2220909
"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is a famous sentence composed by Chompsky, which is syntactically valid but contains no actual semantic significance. Language is a tricky thing, because you can put together just about an unlimited number of utterances but those utterances may not have any external meaning. "Absolute truth" may be similar to this, where it is syntactically valid but does not convey any actual/"real" meaning and only exists within the context of a particular linguistic framework. You can put the words together, but that has no implications on reality.

>To demonstrate its logical necessity
Not at all. For example, consider a hypothetical reader who does not believe in Absolute Truth, but believes that non-absolute truth and non-absolute false exist on a continum. In this case, their answer to the "dichotomy" would be "it's a continum" because they reject the binary formulation in the first place. To force them to pick one or the other is just re-asserting the premise that Absolute Truth exists, rather than arguing for it.

>>2220939
Oh I see now, didnt know this area was so complex

>>2220302
Honestly, they aren't wrong in a sense, but Nietzsche literally said all the shit they are saying 140 years ago.

I've heard Hitchens(Who I actually admire a lot for different reasons)say that he never hears any new arguments from religious people, which is true, because they believe what they believe but the same applies to atheists as well.

The reality is that science has made religion harder to believe. And for good reason. But perhaps it's a deeper problem than that. Maybe science has made it harder to believe in any values at all, and not just religion.

>>2221039
>The reality is that science has made religion harder to believe

The only people who think this are people who know nothing about science or religion.

>>2221142
The koran makes dozens of claims about anatomy that are irrevocably wrong.

>>2221145
>Muhammadanism is all of religion

>>2221142
It's funny, because I could've said the same thing in reverse.

The people who believe the Bible is literally true are going to have a hard time living in the current society, or are seriously ignorant of science.

>>2221169
and are*

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This is a bit fucked but I had a coworker (Amazon warehouse wagecuck) who was a raging Nu Atheist. I made the mistake of inviting him over for Christmas and having some drinks and watch a movie but instead he just bitched about religion for hours on end. He proceeded to scold my wife and I for being religious. We are religious but we don't attend church much.

Anyways, a couple of weeks later he gets killed after clipping the back of a semi truck while going 95 mph on a highway. Boss said I could attend his wake and funeral (two day affair). It was just his parents and I in attendance. Oh well, now you're just wormfood you edgy atheist fuck.

>>2221169
>American Protestantism is all of religion

>>2221183
>religion doesn't get harder to believe in when you discount a bunch of religion that does get harder to believe in
Why don't we reverse the question, then? Provide specific examples of "valid" religion that provides no claims that are incompatible with scientific thought.

>>2221182
That, or he's being tortured eternally. He probably deserves it though, he was rude while he was drunk.

>>2221182
So he was a sperglord, but you're a sadist?

Bitching about something is one thing, relishing in the death of people is another.

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>>2221182
>It was just his parents and I in attendance

>>2221203
He was no sperg. If anything, he was normie as hell with his tattoos, weed smoking, and taste in music. I never said I liked the guy. I extended an olive branch to him so he wouldn't be alone on Christmas and he went full AmazingAtheist. For a while I couldn't wrap my head around what was wrong with him. Eventually I figured that the teenage atheist phase that we all went through hit him like a truck in his mid-20's.
Anyways, no one else attended his funeral because he probably thought funerals were sky daddy fairytale mournings.

>>2221193
Catholicism

>>2221226
Transubstantiation.

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>>2220313
how about sticking with what works instead of trying at yet another utopian fantasy that fails spectacularly

>>2220581

That's what normies call agnosticism.

>I believe in heaven and a higher power watching over us, but I conveniently don't believe in a specific doctrine that I'm expected to abide by.

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I'll speak purely for myself, here, but...

I think the New Atheists are overwhelmingly wrong because they deny the reality of the supernatural. I feel like an intellectually honest approach to the workings of the world cannot do this.

If you are going to take evidence seriously, if you are going to believe what you can record, and what others can tell you, if you are going to take records and experiments as any sort of proof... what are you doing, if you are a hard materialist?

Life after death is real. Ghosts are real. Psychics are real. The many documented miracles of Christianity--some of them on quite a large scale--are real. Fairies are real, and they may (probably are) responsible for the UFO/aliens phenomena. There is documentation of all of this.

I feel like if you're truly going to be proof-based and fact-based about the workings of the world, these conclusions are unavoidable. Things are what they are. But if you're going to assert a hard materialism and atheism against all these testimonies and accounts, I don't know what to do. It seems to me that you're just promoting an ideology, just like any Christian or Muslim or Humanist. And why is your ideology any better than anyone else's?

I guess you can tell me to go back to /x/. Whatever. I call it like I see it.

>>2221263
Why can't psychics perform under well controlled lab conditions?

>>2221271
I don't know, Anon.

Maybe it's all fucking magic and magic doesn't like labs.

But there is something to it, I feel. I don't think it's all just hallucinations and bunk.

>>2221289
The entire reason labs exist because human brains (and this admittedly includes me and all the blindspots I don'the know about because they're my blindspots) are easy to fool. If magic doesn't like labs and only works outside it, then that's a huge red flag.

But okay, let's say that psychics are sensitive and can't handle being scrutinized in a lab. Fine. But then why hasn't anyone been able to produce a fairy? We have spooky shit happening in the dark, but none of them have gotten accidentally hit by a car or something and produced a corpse? Nobody doing mundane animal research happened to find one in the wild? These sound like silly objections, but nobody has been able to come up with at least one through circumstance?

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>>2221300
There are some bleeding Eucharists that have supposedly been sent to labs. Not sure what ever came of them.

>>2220474
The Enlightenment didn't start with Martin Luther; if anything Spinoza gets more credit for kick-starting it.

>>2221356
Probably nothing if we haven't heard dick shit about them.

>>2221356
But the reports of how they were collected and processed is full of aspects that don't stand up to scrutiny. For example, what specific protocol did they use to prevent contamination with other organic material? For that matter, what were the specific methods used to analyze the "blood"? What model number of what machine? These are standard things all science publications need to adhere to. Without them, the evidence is suspect.

>>2221383
But the fact that there's evidence at all is worth noting, I think.

This is the core of my frustrations. It feels like atheism just becomes another ideology, something one takes on faith and belief, rather than the fact-based assertion of truth it purports to be.

>>2221398
>This is the core of my frustrations. It feels like atheism just becomes another ideology, something one takes on faith and belief, rather than the fact-based assertion of truth it purports to be.

His post did nothing to imply that. Expecting the evidence to stand up to testing standards is not unreasonable. This also has nothing to do with atheism, atheism and science are not one and the same.

>>2221398
The thing is, if it's not collected properly evidence isn't actually evidence. If you contaminate a crime scene with a hair that's stuck to your shoe, and you convict the owner of that hair using DNA evidence, did you actually "prove" them guilty?

>>2221403
But the whole reason the other guy brought up /x/-level shit was because the thread was started about atheism. The OP asks how Harris and Hitchens are wrong when it comes to religion. It's worth noting that there is reason for doubt on both their perspectives. Even a slight muddying of the waters is grounds to cast everything Harris and Hitchens believe into question, especially when they assert it from a position of such certainty.

>>2220310
>They ignore the basic fact that religion is an ingrained part of human psychology.


Just like murder and rape, so pretty bad argument.

>Also, if moderate religion was eliminated and it came down to religious extremists vs atheists, the atheists would get rekt everywhere except for China.

This is your wet dream right, kill all them atheists.

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>>2220717

>I don't know anything to be true

What the fuck is this game's problem

>this is not a glitch

Life must be, cause you sure as fuck didn't prove god exists.

>>2220310
> Everything I like is true nature of humans! XD
Pretty weak argument, to be honest. If atheism is truly against human nature atheism couldn't exist.

>The desecrator puts forth his strength against every fear of God, for fear of God would determine him in everything that he left standing as sacred. Whether it is the God or the Man that exercises the hallowing power in the God-man — whether, therefore, anything is held sacred for God’s sake or for Man’s (Humanity’s) — this does not change the fear of God, since Man is revered as “supreme essence,” as much as on the specifically religious standpoint God as “supreme essence” calls for our fear and reverence; both overawe us.

>The fear of God in the proper sense was shaken long ago, and a more or less conscious “atheism,” externally recognizable by a wide-spread “unchurchliness,” has involuntarily become the mode. But what was taken from God has been superadded to Man, and the power of humanity grew greater in just the degree that of piety lost weight: “Man” is the God of today, and fear of Man has taken the place of the old fear of God.

>But, because Man represents only another Supreme Being, nothing in fact has taken place but a metamorphosis in the Supreme Being, and the fear of Man is merely an altered form of the fear of God.

>Our atheists are pious people.

Atheists were already btfo in 1800 by Stirner from all the people.

>>2220302
>I know it's not cool on 4chan to express atheism

this is the most atheist place of all the internets, its just that people here love shitstorms and trolling with edgy bait and pseudoreligious bullshit

fedorafags pushed their shit so hard at some point that it became a thing to counter them for butthurt, but then as all things here go, this got picked up by newfags and became a sort of discourse

thats one of the things i love about this place, as layer upon layer of annons get on 4chan trough time the troll threads of 3 years ago become the ''serious'' threads of current year, till the fags posting in them become collectively recognisable and so the target of troll threads and bait, and so the cicle continues

>>2221501
> target of troll threads and bait
I feel like *tips fedora* autists are already close to that.

>>2221505

its happened numbers of times allready

>>2220302

they are mainly wrong in missunderstanding humans and human behavior, and purposefully misconceptualising the subject of religion

this seems strange considering they are educated people, especialy the first part since they are allways on about biology

they have problems with oversimplifying complex things, overemphasising this or that, moralising and reducing things to absurdity, while their own 'philosophy' is shallow and autistic

also there is something profoundly protestant about them that annoys people, they arent just atheists, they follow the light of truth and reason, they shine it against the darkness of religion and superstition, they preach and evangelise, like ancient bishops or missionaries

>>2220621
Whom are you quoting?

>>2220362
>the first #Humanists were all Christian
Being this unknowledgable about history.
Loads of humanist ideas and thoughts were professed without any connection to christianity.

>>2220597
>Judging people by their clothes

Should I judge by how many chins you have?

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>mid-2000s
>Muslim terror and war
>people blame it on Islam's theology, or on the irrationality and divisiveness of religion itself
>atheism becomes a mainstream talking point

>mid-2010s
>Muslim terror and war still going on (plus migrants)
>now people start blaming it on US imperialism and white privilege, going on about "moderate Muslims"
>the only ones still talking about atheism are the atheists themselves

>>2220302

>I think the new atheists are wrong with their logical positivsm and utilitarianism but when it comes to Judeo Christian religion and values they seem on point

First of all "judeo-christian" values is a forced meme that doesn't make any sense.
Second, if they're right about christian values being wrong then why are they progs? Progressivism is just christian values without Jesus.
Third point, they have very little understanding of theological arguments.

>>2221894
> Progressivism is just christian values without Jesus.
Nice meme you got here.

>>2221913

Yes, it has been an incredibly successful meme, that's why it's so widespread.
If you were trying to deny that it is so, I guess it's just a coincidence that it developed in christian countries and christian countries only. Also a coincidence that the main values are about fraternity and equality which were the values that set apart christianity from pagan religions. Also a coincidence that progs care about orthodoxy more than orthopraxy. Lots of coincidences.

>>2221894
>Progressivism is just christian values without Jesus.
The concept of progress is much newer than jesus, fuck off

>>2221940
Why is SSA such a shithole if cuckianity is so goot ??

>>2220302
The problem with the New Atheists is that they just don't know enough about the religion they're trying to argue against. Richard Dawkins doesn't understand that God isn't another creature, but is Being itself. Also, most of the New Atheists, when interpretting the Bible, usually interpret it the same way that a Fundamentalist Christian would. So they end up making good arguments against Fundamentalist Christianity, but most Christians don't interpret the Bible that way, so their arguments are only affective against a minority of believers. Another problem the New Atheists have is that they just have a ton of misconceptions about Christian history.

>>2223424
>most Christians don't interpret the Bible that way
To be honest, you can't counter all autistic special snowflake personal biblical interpretations at once.

>>2220302
It's wrong because a negative claim have burden of proof too.

>inb4 we don't actually say God doesn't exist...

Yes you do

>>2220310
>They ignore the basic fact that religion is an ingrained part of human psychology.
Doesn't make it correct.

>>2223424
You have to hand it to them for at least pointing out the elephant in the room (The Bible is nonsense), before you move the goalposts ("god is Being itself").

>>2223449
Yeah but you don't attack the ideas of Stalin when you want to argue against the entirety of left-wing politics.

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>>2223470
You can prove negative from reductio ad absurdum which is trivial in case of God.

>>2223485
> stalin killed muh billions in gulags
> means communism doesn't work
Most litearlly do exactly that, even here.

>>2221398
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-sword-in-the-stone-at-montesiepi-chapel

http://aleteia.org/2016/05/01/the-real-sword-in-the-stone-is-in-a-church-in-italy/

Explain this.

>>2223497
The problem is Protestant fundamentalism is different from most of Christianity and widely disliked outside of those who practice it.

>>2223490
>reductio ad absurdum

Which is why the only people I ever see who really care about or hate the NewAtheists are the Christians(atheists excluded) who believe in an absurdum type of Christianity, young earth creationists and other snake wranglers for example.

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>>2223500
https://joelsavage1.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/the-eight-wonder-of-the-world-is-anokyes-sword-in-the-ashanti-kingdom-of-ghana/

Just failed attempt to replicate more sophisticated african magic.

>>2221182
Why would you tell lies on the internet?

>>2223561
How did the sword get into the stone, though?

>>2223424
>God is Being itself

What in the flying fuck is this supposed to mean?

>>2223597
Many interpretations of God exist. Pantheist believe God is everything.

>>2223594
Just stuck here, nothing implies that swords can't cut thought stones. Japanese katana for example can even slice threw diamonds and glass.

>>2223621
You can't stick a steel sword straight through stone.

>>2223621
>can even slice threw diamonds
{Citation Needed}

>>2223609
> interpretations of God
Can you define God in a way that fits all of them? If not then atheism is right by default.

>>2223597
Whenever non-religious thought encroaches onto what was previously the domain of God, God is reformulated onto something more abstract. We got to the point where God can only either be "t-1" before the big bang or vague metaphysical statements that do not actually mean anything but sound very profound.

>>2223628
>>2223632
Dudes wtf its folded steel

>>2223663
It's a sword from 1100s

>>2223636
>If not then atheism is right by default.
How?

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>>2223693
But what about stone? You can stick your hand straight through escpecially weak one.

>>2223717
Because turns out that God doesn't exist as some kind of conspect that can be interpreted.

>>2223727
Not all stones are similar on the hardness scale. The sword that stones in is a strong stone. I'm a history major but this was biology 101.

>>2223736
>Can't interoperate something means it isn't real.
I guess Black Holes aren't real either.

>>2223747
Can it be just stuck here in say a path that was in stone for an other reason?

>>2221433
>Just like murder and rape, so pretty bad argument.

Murder and rape are not ingrained parts of human psychology but manifestations of mental state in relation to social circumstances. Murder and rape are situations also which are something that must be defined under the legal systems and 'moral' attitudes of the time and place they happen.

If you think you've debunked the primary assertion then think again because you have done nothing of the sort and tried to use a rubbish logical fallacy to denounce what you disliked reading.

>>2223753
> Black Holes aren't real
There is definition of Black Hole that is right for all theories. What is definition of God that applies for any believe?

>>2223768
Scientist think they know what Black holes are. In the same way people think they know what God is. Just because not everyone agrees doesn't mean anything.

>>2220302
New Atheists are Pretty much STEMers who act like Yelling "SCIENCE" makes them experts on Cultural, Geopolitical, philosophical issues

The "Horsemen" have been exposed as sensationalists by people who actually know their shit and yet they got popular because they make Atheists, STEM Autists and pan-Western Nationalists better about themselfs as if they are this enlightnened ubermensch

One could even call them populists

>>2220310
>religion is an ingrained part of human psychology.
So is the urge to kill people for fun.

>>2223788
>So is the urge to kill people for fun.
I've never wanted to kill people for fun. Your either a sociopath or wrong.

>>2223790
>I've never wanted to kill people for fun.
Just break your frontal lobe and say that again. Also war faggot.

>>2223781
The point here is there is definition of what Black Hole is, so there can be made argument for their existence. If there is no definition of what is God, than no argument for its existence can be made, therefore atheim won by default and by abstence of opposition, so to speak.

>>2223818
God
ɡäd/
noun
noun: God; noun: god; plural noun: gods; plural noun: the gods
1.
(in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.
synonyms:
the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator, the Maker, the Godhead; More
Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh;
(God) the Father, (God) the Son, the Holy Ghost/Spirit, the Holy Trinity;
the Great Spirit, Gitchi Manitou;
humorousthe Man Upstairs
"a gift from God"
2.
(in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.
"a moon god"
synonyms:
deity, goddess, divine being, celestial being, divinity, immortal, avatar
"sacrifices to appease the gods"

>>2220310
To say that the Neanderthal burial was to give them food for the afterlife would be like our descendants saying we put our people in coffins because we thought they'd escape.
They did it as a sign of reverence.
Don't be such an arrogant retard, neanderthals would laugh at your room temp IQ.
>>2220302
>how are they wrong
They're atheists.
Atheism is objectively wrong because any metaphysical truth which one accepts as beyond the self is inherently religious truth/divine truth.
To strawman religion into some obscure interpretation is just going after low hanging fruit, atheists are on the whole unintelligent, there are exceptions though.
But atheists believe in contradictions (as everyone does) and then criticize others for believing in contradictions.>>2223808
>survival instinct is fun
>hurr sure just remove the part of yourself which makes you normal
Fucking idiot>>2220574
Alright you dirty apologist. He does ignore it, he doesn't realize it because he lacks the self awareness to understand his own subjective perspective as a Man raised in a culturally Western society.
Also he lost a debate to a Jew about atheism being objectively bad for human kind, Hitchens even said it wasn't one of his finer moments.>>2221433
You fucking idiot.
I would take the time to reply and denigrate your intellect further but this kind fellow has already done it>>2223764

>>2223476
>correct
Define truth, and before you define empiricism, define it in a metaphysical sense.
You see when atheists go into epistemic denial as you are right now, you can get them to backpedal even the closest and most solid viewpoints they hold.
When one undercuts humanity or religion, one must first demolish empirical study entirely.
It's a philosophical point, but have another point.
Religion is correct because it is a form of objective idealism
>Muh relativity
>Muh subjectiveness
I've never seen a logical syllogism to prove subjectivity which wasn't subject to a form of the post hoc ergo propter hoc

>>2223824
Can superhuman being really be applied to something like pantheism?

>>2223818
>no definition
There are numerous definitions and any one of them could be right.
Atheism is not agnosticism.
You're a delusional if you think atheism is correct by default or you're an idiot for not being agnostic when you can't be sure.
I swear man, atheists are now the stupidest people on earth.
It's like, jump to conclusions when it's much more fun to unravel mysteries?

>>2223930
> There are numerous definitions and any one of them could be right.
If there is no definition that unifies all of them then theism doesn't make sense. Because, there is no God to interpret him in one way or another. Means that God doesn't exist as object of discourse, and so on. Because theists failed to even define it and just single empty label hardly worth arguing about.

>>2223930
>you're an idiot for not being agnostic when you can't be sure
you're an idiot if you don't use my favorite label even if you hold the same view

>>2223988
*>you're an idiot if you don't use my favorite label even if you hold the same view
about the worst typo I could make

>>2223597
>What in the flying fuck is this supposed to mean?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_(philosophy)

They're all dabbling in pointless sophistry which has nothing to do with the interests of people at large. Having a large circle jerk with a bunch of other people who already agree with you- in a manner that will never change the mind of anyone who has a different opinion to you because you're using overly inflammatory and derisive language- is not going to bring anybody out of poverty, or change the life of anybody who needs a leg up in life. Does Hitchens or Dawkins actually think that going up onto a soap-box and reducing the criss-crossing stories and philosophies of the innumerable cultures of the world into something as base or immature as the "flying-spaghetti monster" thought experiment is actually going to get to them? Is some hapless, dirt-poor farmer in Wisconsin going to appreciate listening to some drunken idiot like Hitchens make cheap jokes about a positive force in their life like a Church-prayer group? It's a silly, insular movement of elitists, who use the same anti-intellectual games that they accuse their enemies of using, to appeal to disaffected, middle-class kiddos; without any sort of positive community value which religion has inspired. it's just decadent and stupid behaviour that studiously avoids the problem of poverty, and will therefore never be able to supersede religion in any material manner.

>>2221234

You don't understand transubstantiation. It's a change of metadata, not the actual data.

>>2221369
This. And Religion is BTFO in the western world as a result of it. Not much need for new atheists here, fewer and fewer people practice religion anyways, and the numbers are going down each year.

>>2220310
It's because of our fear of death. Religion was made as a way for people to go "don't worry about dying, sky daddy's got you!"

>>2226046
We have zero evidence of your "metadata" existing, and when "miracles occur that seem to support the existence of your "metadata," the samples are all mysteriously collected in a very sloppy and unstandardized way.

From a scientific viewpoint, a transubstsntiation invisible to all forms of detection does not exist, otherwise it would produce one of any measurable effects beyond a placebo.

>>2226179

oh for fuck sake its a ritual with symbolic meaning, no sane person ever expects the piece of dry pasta in their mouth to turn into flesh, no one would even take communion if they believed this, thats not what the sacrament is about

>>2226202
>ritual with symbolic meaning
You should probably be made aware that this is an explicit heresy, assuming you actually belong to the Catholic Church. Go tell a priest you belive that the Eurachrist is strictly symbolic during confession, and report back what he says. Or, if you're protestant, go refer to the post chain that argues against biblical literalism. Of course, you may he one of those protestants who are lite-catholics who believe in most but not all of their dogma, like Anglicans. In which case, feel free to specify and I am sure there will be some supernatural element.

>>2226217

average catholics never believed in the dogmas, either because they literaly didnt know their own religion(or rather, they knew their own religion perfectly and lived it day to day, it just didnt have much to do with the bible other than names) for the most part of catholic history or because today they just believe 'generaly' but dont realy bother with the dogmas

what these things mean to most catholics might be hard for newatheist logic to fathom since it emphasises literal meanings and literal belief, but that isnt and never was how popular religion functions, there are layers upon layers of ritual, symbolism, custom and mentality that go into it to the point that in religions like christianity, islam or buddhism many populations basicaly live and practice their own religion which is conected to the 'actual' religion of denomination only by things like holding a book sacred or recapitulating the same sets of commands and prohibitions or accepting the same myths and ceremonies

for example, a 15th century average catholic layman would sooner believe that taking the eucharist and turning it upside down above a bolw of water and saying certain specific words of power might cause some change in the envioroment than would he actualy believe that piece of pasta could possibly turn to a bloody piece of meat, it was a magical understanding of things as much as religious, and christian mythology and ritual were simply grafted on top of baptised pagan stuff

so in the ceremony of transubstantiation the eucharist actualy does transform into the body of christ, everione knows this because they are there, they see the priest raise the piece of bread above his head and say - the body of christ - and that makes it so

that someone might in that moment point a finger and say - kek its still just a piece of bread are you blind how can you possibly believe its... etc... only speaks of ones autism, moreso than about the personal beliefs and motives of the congregation

>>2226266
So we are supposed to deny homosexuals the ability to visit each other in hosptals because pointing out that bread is bread is "autism"? And we are supposed to just ignore how hilariously incongruous this ritual is with our understanding of how matter actually works, specifically because we don't want to be accused of such?

>>2226276
>>2226266
This is not even to mention how ridiculous it is your implied request for people to change science in order to accommodate your pet religious rituals are in order to not commit the sin of autism, while happily submitting any other religion up for scrutiny.

>>2226276

youre not supposed to do anything, im saying catholics dont actualy believe the eucharist turns into flesh, thats not even what the words are taken to mean, its 'the body of christ' its the communion, its all symbols and collective ritual magic, thats what ther whole mass is as a ceremony

im trying to point out how attacking this from a newatheist point is flaved since it completely misses the object of attack, it might as well be a strawman thing

>>2226293
>catholics dont actualy believe the eucharist turns into flesh
Please perform an experiment for me. Tomorrow/today, please explain this view of the eucharist and transubstantuation to your local priest. Report back what the priest says.

>>2220618
There are no girls either

>>2226296

the priest would say it becomes the body of christ
he also has daily experience with the eucharist and so cannot actualy believe it turns to meat, since that never happens
so obviously that he believes in transupstantiation must mean something else, something beyond the physical state of things obvious to you or me

in the case of most other faitful, you might simply be confusing what things are with what things mean to people, realy the interpretation of religious belief as being about how things are is lacking, since its usualy far more about what things mean, that something is symbolic does not mean that it isnt real to people or groups

>>2220717
Nigga I believe in god and even I don't understeand how that train of tought went.

>>2226316
>he also has daily experience with the eucharist and so cannot actualy believe it turns to meat, since that never happens
>so obviously that he believes in
All I am asking you to do is to report this to your local priest. That the eucharistis merely a symbolic recreation. If it is what you believe, sincerely, there is no problem allowing your priest to know this, yes? So do so, and report results.

>>2221263
You had me for a moment but you went full sperg at the end.

>>2220939
>"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is a famous sentence composed by Chompsky
I was about to call you a genius for putting into words what I've been thinking but you didn't come up with it so I'll just thank you for showing me the way.

>>2223497
So you are defending that sort of argument?

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>>2223621
>Japanese katana for example can even slice threw diamonds and glass.

>>2223103

Yes and?
Sola scriptura i much newer than Jesus too, does that mean protestantism is not christianity?

>>2223768
That he is the origin of the universe.

>>2223900
Jesus, that was fucking savage.

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>>2226059
Yes, as people become increasingly more desinterested in other people, as they increasingly put themselves above anyone else, and pleasure above responsability, as depression rates spike and as Europe and the US literally collapse into themselves?

Yes, that's literally what brought us into the dark ages 1500 years ago, congratulations on your logical crusade against philosophical thinking and in the study of anything that is beyond our normal comprehension.

>>2226331
Have you ever gone to church?

Have you ever assited a service?

It's literally an hour of the priest reading passages of the bible and encouraging you to dissect their meaning and not to take them literally.

>>2220302
Humans cannot escape having a Weltanschauung

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>>2226384
>Yes, that's literally what brought us into the dark ages 1500 years ago

Confirmed for not knowing anything about history. The decline of the Roman Empire had little to do with "muh degeneracy!" - in fact, the Roman Empire coincidentally spiraled deeper into decline once it took up Christianity.

Actual reasons for why the Roman Empire fell include the fact that the Romans never formalized their succession laws, the Crisis of the Third Century (which caused a breakdown of internal trade and resulted in economic stagnation and rise of manorialism/psuedo-feudalism, which in turn allowed the provincial elite to drift further away from the centralized government), barbarian migrations, civil wars, etc.

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>>2226455
You can cite the grand scale general reasons, and you'd be right, but you can't ignore the qualities in the individual level which are why those things happened in the first place.

Yes, Christianity is a big part of the reason the roman empire fell, it's usually not a good idea to shake and abandon your entire moral system, as it is the only thing giving legitimatecy to your laws. When you can't control the population, and the population has no incentive to control itself, your society starts to malfunction. I'm not even going to touch on the subject of how all the different cultures that had to coexists under the roman banner weren't able to get together and how their gradually more, uh, "accepting" military reforms increased their war expendings to the point to which they weren't able to keep up anymore.

Low and behold, the fall of the roman empire.

>>2226398
kill yourself