The meaning of "Free Thinking:" Free thinking is slave thinking

Originally Posted by Jim Morgan

Sam Harris has some good arguments that the mind and brain are one of the same thing. I like to use beer as an example, Beer is a physical thing, it contains chemicals and if you drink enough of it you can potentially change the way which you behave indicating that a physical thing has changed your mind. Some people have the natural tendency to be quiet when sober but violent when drinking, thus the physical certainly has a great deal off effect on the mind. Sam harris has a Video on free will which I think you might find interesting.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRIcb...eature=related

that's argument from analogy. Analogies don't prove anything and arguing from them to prove somethign is a fallacy.

there is no way to prove that brain = mind because there is no way across the epistemological gap. you can't get outside your own perceptions and check them. When they try to make that kind of augment they start using bait and switch. The substitute brain function for conscoiusness.

That's highly ideological potion anyway. The whole naturalistic world view depends upon that bait and switch. you are ideologically compelled to deny the basis of reality as mind.

asking an atheist to think fairly about that is like asking a John Bircher to think fairly about the Communist Manifesto.



Originally Posted by blondie

You can prove it as well as you can prove anything.

Nope. no evdience to support and lot that goes against it.

The attempt to discredit evidence is just an attempt to equate things that are not true with stuff that is true. I believe this form of apologetics is very weak because it can obviously be applied to things which you will reject out of hand.

O yea that's the way ideological propaganda works. when it's there stuff thinking about it and paralyzing it is real improvident. criticizing it is that's skepticism is about. it's all good to do that as long as it's agaisnt Christianity.

when it's against atheism then it's unscientific and it's wrong.

free thinking means slave thinking. when it's against them it's fine when it's against us then it makes you a lunatic and new age wirdo and it's unscientific.

Atheist Ideolgoy: Deniel of the "Science Only" Viewpoint

no atheist ideology?

I posted this about culture clash on CARM in thinking about the reasons atheists can't accept God arguments.

I think a lot of this stuff, the war between atheists and theists, is really just the result of different cultural expectations. Cultural change is coming at a frantic rate, the mazeways are shifting too fast for a lot of people to get their bearings. That doesn't just mean conservative theists. A lot of atheist might be atheist becuase they can't grasp anything solid n the shifting sands of cultural constructs.

Atheists have this ideology that tells them to deny it's an ideology, but it tells them there's one form of knowledge; scinece. Basically atheism is about replacing God with science worship. its' still a clash two different religions it's just God of the bible vs scinece. One thing that angers me the most is that becuase they only accept one form of knowledge they wont accept answers that don't come from that form of knowledge.

Somewhere along the way atheists shifted from cultural relativists to totalitarians. They went form liberal to librarian and became narrow minded. In refusing to accept any other form of knowledge you are just stipulating that only your views will do, that's ideology. That's exactly what ideology is.

Take for example the question "where did God come form." We basically have two answer. the primary answer is "God didn't come from anywhere. God is eternal." Yet in saying that we are actually saying a bit more. we are saying that there is some eternal basis of existence that's primordial. Then we have several logcial ideas about what that would be, and the most engaging one is mind.

There's nothing illogical about it certain atheist go ape becuase it's so removed from the approved received for of knowledge that the priesthood of knowledge (science) authorizes. Search yourselves honestly and you will have to realize that you are just reacting against things that aren't part of your world view.

hsmithson says "strawman," then adds.

That's a pretty bold claim. I challenge you to point out just ONE of my posts that says science is the only form of knowledge or that we should worship science. Otherwise, please retract your assertion that every post I make has those characteristics.

1337

Which atheists are you talking about? Is this yet another case of you assuming what your opposition thinks and arguing a position that you made up?

It certainly does seem like a strawman.

problem: I am always seeing statements by atheist that imply that science is the only form of knowledge and the only way to think about things and that this is the major reason why they can't accept God arguments; becasue they write out of reality any kind of evidence that doesn't' support their conclusion.

then when I point it out they go "O we don't say that. what's wrong with you can't you can't quote me saying that."

Examples:

Brainw on an old thread started me "Atheist Contradiction: fortress of facts vs mutliverse."



post 2

I know you are going to agree with what he says. That's not the issue. The issue is this statement shows exactly the fortress of facts and the kind of thinking I'm discussing.

God apparently does exist only in minds.

And theoretical physics has a long history of predicting things using pure mathematics that are later verified by experiment.

Theology has no such track record.

That's not true, it does. That's the beside the point right now. The point is that saying this is exactly perfectly a statement of what I'm talking about; that is the fortress of facts. "we have the only way to know things." that's just what he's saying.

they are saying "only our method is valid, your method isn't worth anything even though we don't know anything about it."

Therefore we can put more confidence in the predictions of theoretical physics than the unsubstantiated claims about what different people feel inside their brains alone.

You lose.

It's not about truth its about we are going to get you. we are better than you. its not about truth it's about revenge. but look at his statement! he says we have the only way to really know stuff. that's a perfect example of teh fortress of facts.

Of course I can show theologies ways of knowing stuff I can show contradictions to this and disproof of it but you just write them off without reading a single study becuase it's not part of the ideology.

atheists have a dictum: we will NOT Accept anything that counts against our view.

(1) science the only knowledge

(2) the only scinece agrees with us.

Proof: I've talked about 200 studies for five years no one has read a single one. they lied about it, they confused articles with studies but the never read an actual study, (maybe in the last six months someone read one, but after five years of bitching about it) they still don't make valid methodology attacks.


Example 2:


Liza” public opinion expressed by commenter on blog “Apple Eaters,” no date given. UTL: visited 8/26/2010

"The question of God’s existence is incredibly loaded because, if God doesn’t exist, the majority of people in the world derive meaning in their lives from a lie. For this reason, the capacity for natural science to explain why things happen without appeal to the supernatural is threatening to religion and to religious believers. After all, if we can explain everything without appeal to God’s intervention, why introduce Him into the equation at all?"

This is an anecdotal example of how deeply ingrained the scientistic view point is at the popular level. Again from the popular level, a website called God is Imaginary:

Website God is Imaginary . URL http://godisimaginary.com/i11.htm visited 8/26/2010

"There is no scientific evidence indicating that God exists. We all know that. For example:

• God has never left any physical evidence of his existence on earth.
• None of Jesus' "miracles" left any physical evidence either. (see this page)
• God has never spoken to modern man, for example by taking over all the television stations and broadcasting a rational message to everyone.
• The resurrected Jesus has never appeared to anyone. (see this page)
• The Bible we have is provably incorrect and is obviously the work of primitive men rather than God. (see this page)
• When we analyze prayer with statistics, we find no evidence that God is "answering prayers." (see this page)

• Huge, amazing atrocities like the Holocaust and AIDS occur without any response from God.
• And so on…
Let's agree that there is no empirical evidence showing that God exists.
If you think about it as a rational person, this lack of evidence is startling. There is not one bit of empirical evidence indicating that today's "God", nor any other contemporary god, nor any god of the past, exists. In addition we know that:
1. If we had scientific proof of God's existence, we would talk about the "science of God" rather than "faith in God".
2. If we had scientific proof of God's existence, the study of God would be a scientific endeavor rather than a theological one.
3. If we had scientific proof of God's existence, all religious people would be aligning on the God that had been scientifically proven to exist. Instead there are thousands of gods and religions.
The reason for this lack of evidence is easy for any unbiased observer to see. The reason why there is no empirical evidence for God is because God is imaginary."

this is part of the idea they are saying if there isn't any scientific evdience then no reason to believe it. that means there is no other kind of of evidence that matters. that has to mean scinece is the only from of knowledge.

HRG on carm basically lets the cat out of the bag by admitting scinece is the only valid form of knowledge.
Originally Posted by Occam

By empiricist standards, I doubt that you have evidence that anything causes anything, let alone that the brain causes the mind.

HRG:

We have evidence that it makes it highly likely - just like we have evidence that it is highly likely that sufficiently heated carbon compounds cause combustion.

Apparently many people still suffer from Plato's view - that only 100% knowledge is knowledge.

Hes' saying that all knowledge isn't really important. only scientific knowledge matters. so all the time time they say "we don't say scinece is the only form of knowledge they really means 'it's the only valid form."

Blondie adds to it:

It has nothing to do with science. Science is the best way we have of figuring stuff out simply because it is objective.

That's just what I said. When they deny that they think science is the only knowledge they are really thinking (it's not the only kind but it's all that works).

what do the cowards say to this? they refuse to read it. see the admission by Aussie guy:

Originally Posted by Aussieguy

No, we don't. We atheists by definition do not believe in God. How therefore can we believe he wrote any of the bible? It would be like believing that Bilbo Baggins actually wrote The Hobbit, despite not believing in Hobbits.

I have no idea what the rest of your post was about, but it didn't appear to have anything to do with what I said.

Blondie:

There is magic in mythology. Do you think mythology is a way of acquiring knowledge? How about poetry?

ibid:

So the new meme among apologists is that atheists are into "scientism." I would agree that scientists are particularly lionized in the new atheist movement, but so what? Science is just a method of figuring things out. It is the best one that I am aware of. We need to turn this argument aroung and get the theists to admit they are really arguing for the validity of revealed "truth" and gut feelings. What other methods are there of acquiring knowledge? Are any of these better than science?

In saying this he's already excluded any kind of knowledge that's not scientific. Of course the arts are a kind of knowledge. The arts have their own magisteria, they are a discipline in their own right, this guy doesn't value them. "Science is a method of figuring thing out," we see from the things he says in the thread they give no credence ot any other form of figuring things out.


Ibid

That is the point of this thread. To flesh this out. You are communicating with other people and are certainly gathering knowledge. So what we really need is a way of gathering correct or truthful knowledge.I could tell you I am 12 feet tall.

ibid

Science can't answer things outside its domain. No kidding. Science can't tell me which movie to go see at the matinee. How about a truth claim that science can't tackle? One that doesn't involve meaningless words or value judgements.

like that's the only form of knowledge aside from scinece, just little matters of entertainment and personal tastes. so ethics and meaning in life and the search for why we are here all of that is just BS to them becasue they have accepted an ideology that answers that stuff for them.If I was not a believer in God I would stil oppose this totalitarian nonsense with all my will and all my heart. If I didn't believe I would be a social Christian just to thwart this fascistic movement.

Of course you don't becuase you are scared to death to read proof that disproves your position. you research with your eyes closed.

the quote you quote from is misconstrued and taken out of context. I didn't say "o they don't hu" to "Atheists don't believe God put it in the Bible." Obviously I know that. I said that to "we don't think science is the only form of knowledge."

the quotes I quoted, which you are afraid to read, are examples of atheists saying "science is the only form of knowledge." what Blondie says about "it's correct or trutful knoweldge" makes this clear. Other forms of knowledge aren't truth. They can deny believing that it's the only form of knowledge when in reality they do believe that, they just rationalize it by saying "it's not the only one just the only one that's truthful."


Originally Posted by shunyadragon

I disagree that history and historical methods 'are' science, they use the objective methods of science in historical methodology. They are not better, just another source of knowledge about the world we live in.

Poetry is not a way to acquire knowledge, it is medium ot express and share knowledge.

BrainW takes the prise for stupidity:
post 33

Which still has it's basis in observation, the collection and analysis of forensic evidence..etc It's not a bunch of weirdos sitting around making stuff up, like theologians.

A bunch of "wirdies?" The atheists expelled form CARM who formed AARM were into everything form gay bondage to rapping dolls and yet it's theologians who are "wiredies!" why? Obviously becuase they are not brian washed by the ideology, they are not on template and they don't point the rhetoric or the slogans. This guy has read no theology, he's saying this about theologians becuase they not part of the ideology he serves. Throughout this thread and the whole board in general they are constantly shooting their mouths off about things of which they are totally ignorant.


Originally Posted by Occam

I think this discussion needs to begin with a definition of "science." I know "science" is a really hard word to define, though, so maybe you could just describe it or something.

Keith (ibid) observes:

Agreed. Because what I have observed is that when someone offers X as another form of knowledge, the response is "Well X is actually science". So what is science? Or a better question is what isn't science (according to some atheists)?

That's a good observation. They are so stuck in thinking only in scientific terms that when an alternative is presented all they do is try and compere it to scinece. the only valid form of thought is scientific.


Apologetics, Atheist ideology, science as only form of knoweldge

Atheist IQ Scam: Bad Science and Racist Assumptions: Kanazawa, Nyborg, Lynn, Hamilton

Nyborg

The major figures in the new round of atheist IQ scam are:Helmuth Nyborg, Richard Lynn and Satoshi Kanazawa (from psychology today). There have been several articles critcial of both their not so hidden assumptions about race as well a their alleged scientific methodologies. Kanazawa and others (Templer, Arikawa) claim to link estimates of national IQ with estimates of reproductive strategies, temperature, and geographic distance form Africa. This approach is criticized by Jelte M. Wicherts,Denny Borseboom, and Connor V. Dolan (Blog: Scieverse--"why Natioanl IQ's Do Not Support Evolutionary Theories of Intelligence"), of Department of Psychology U. Amsterdam.

Assumptions: No Flynn Effect

The major Scientific assumption made by Kanazawa et al, that misses the boat, is the failure to take the Flynn effect seriously. The Flynn effect finds that IQ's are rising over time, which ultimately means that what is being tested is not intelligence but cultural literacy. This is because our grandfathers were running the world with IQ equviolant to retarted yet obviously they were not restarted. So what was happening was they had not yet developed the same level of cultural contribution around concepts of scientific-cultural ideology. Thus by our standards they appear stupid becuase they didn't have the same kinds of answers we had. Natioanl IQ's have actually, according to Wicherts, been subject to and correlate with all the variables hat make for the Flynn effect.

The Flynn effect directly challenges the validity of IQ tests as a valid measurement of intelligence. It basically says they are not measuring intelligence but cultural constructs such a scientifically ideological truth regime. These Brave New World Atheists make assumptions that write the effect off even though its' been scientifically established and is accepted by psychologists the world over. They also make assumptions about migration and reproduction that don't account for modern develoepments.

The Savanna theory.

This is a racist theory, developed by Raymond Dart (1925) which assumes percent and insurmountable brain shrinkage by tribes (African) who moved to the savanna. It seems to have been an attempt to explain racial differences:


Belayneh Abate (PDF)
November 10, 2006.

[4, 5] What this theory in simple terms, asserts is that early
homids (perhaps Lucy and her neighbors), were faced with lack of forest. To overcome this problem our ancestors went
to the Savanna (grass land) and adapted themselves to that environment. However, as it was mentioned in Kanazawa’s
paper [1] for a man to learn this adaptation measures, the exposure (for example, shrinkage of the forest) has to occur at
the early developmental stage of the brain. One can derive from this assertion that Africans who are deprived of any
kind of modern technology during their early brain developmental stage will remain stupid or idiots no matter what!
Recommending “googling” the critics of Savanna Theory, I will leave the judgment about the plausibility of this theory
to the readers.

Kanazawa uses the term "savanna principle" for the idea that the brain evolved on the savanna the extremely differnt enviroment form our urban one created "difficulties." (^ Kanazawa, Satoshi (2004) The Savanna principle. Managerial and decision economics, 25 (1). pp. 41–54. ISSN 0143-6570) I documented Kanazawa's adherence to the Savanna theory when I first discussed his articles on the Psychology Today Blog on this blog in "Atheism's Psychology Today Scam."

Flawed Data Collection:

Still dealing with Kanazawa, as I have pointed out before, he barrows his data second hand from different places. These guys make different assumptions.

ibid

Data Collection Problem: Kanazawa admits borrowing secondary data from different places. He borrowed the IQ data from Lynn (Northern Ireland) and Vanhanen (Finland) Table-1. According to him, IQ was directly measured only
in eleven Sub-Saharan African Countries and the rest was predicted using prediction methods Kawakawa tried to show that the IQ measurement was valid by analyzing the directly and indirectly measured data separately. It is true that no method of measurement is perfectly accurate or precise. However, one has to ask how the samples were drawn, and how the results of the sample IQ’s were translated in to national average. Whether IQ measures general intelligence
or not is another story. For the moment, let’s assume it does. Most IQ tests include both verbal and written tests. How valid will be the IQ test in Sub-Saharan countries where almost all sense organs of the people are turned dysfunctional
by dictator rulers who are supported by major powers of the world? In addition to that, IQ measurement is not entirely objective. Our daily life proves how people are prejudiced towards one another irrespective of educational status.
Therefore, to what extent should we believe the validity of the IQ measurements of Lynn and Vanhanen? What about the possibility of differential misclassification errors in the IQ measurement?

more:

Intentional insult or lack of common sense? We understand Kanazawa borrowed the data from others. However, he
failed to relate the computer generated data (table-I) to the objective reality on the ground. Whether it valid or not, here
is one way of classifying mental retardation based on IQ. Table-2.
Table 2. Welchler Adult Intelligence Scale Class IQ

Profound Below 20
Sever 20-34
Moderate 35-49
Mild 50-69
Borderline 70-79

Kanazawa provided only the mean IQ. I did not find any of the other measures of dispersion. If you look at the average IQ of most Sub-Saharan Counties most of them lie below 72. Table-1 That means majority of the Sub-Saharan
Country people are suffering from profound, sever, moderate, mild and borderline mental retardation. Is that so? I wonder how Africans’ build up the Pyramids of Egypt, the Castle of Aksume and Fasiledus, the monasteries of Lalibela
and Lake Tana in Ethiopia. I wonder how this mentally retarded brain developed the Ethiopian alphabet and the Ethiopian Calendar! It looks Kanazawa is excited just because the computer provided him with profoundly flawed thicker effect estimates and smaller p-values. It is obvious that these statistical measures are just a bit part of causalassociation. The Confounding Problem: For those of you who are not familiar with confounding variable, in simple terms, it is a
factor the affects the outcome of interest. For a variable to be a confounder, it hast to be related to both the independent variable (in this case IQ) and the dependent variable (in this case life expectancy). It looks that Kanazawa is obsessed
only with GDP, IQ and economic inequality. What about other factors, which are related to both IQ (whatever it may
be) and life expectancy? All sorts of disease conditions, cultures, traditions, not to mention, lack of freedom of speech, the scars of colonialism, slavery and other inhuman atrocities that Africans experienced for centuries? Flaws in the Discussion: Kanazawa stated in his discussion “… there appears little that education can to do
significantly with the general intelligence of the population.” Even if we assume we have clear definition of general intelligence, can any one buy this argument? When they test for IQ, don’t they ask for words? Don’t they ask to write something or play certain kinds of games? Are not these things something we acquire through learning? In fact IQ directly measures (if it measures any thing at all) what we have already learned not what you are going to learn in the
future.

Conclusion: Kanazawa immersed himself in the ocean of shaky psychological theories. He started from unsettled definitions. He asked a eugenic question. Then he borrowed invalid measurements and tried to answer his question. He ignored confounding factors in the design and analysis stage. Therefore, the results of his study can be explained only with one word: bias!

Other criticisms along these same lines, that data is all second hand and some is not really the finds made form actual IQ tests. The book is based upon a limited number of studies. Other sources gathering data first hand have made mistakes. There are not very many such studies and some of the data is not really from IQ tests but from estimates based upon surrounding nations. Since Kanazawa doesn't use first hand data,it's important to know that the major sources of such data are also criticized. one such source is a book IQ and the Wealth of Nations. This is a work by Richard Lynn, whose data Kanazawa uses and who co-author with Nybrog and Hamilton in their IQ scam. Tatu Vanhanen, at University of Finland is Lynn's co-author.

Book Review in Heredity
(2004) 92, 359–360.

This book starts with the 'hypothesis' that differences in IQ are (partly) responsible for differences in national wealth around the world. It ends with the claim that the gap between rich and poor 'will be impossible to eradicate' (p 195). In between is a remarkable creation and moulding of data to show the statistical correlation the hypothesis requires. But there is circularity in the whole exercise.

As the authors acknowledge, national wealth reflects industrial development, which requires an ever-expanding middle class, and IQ scores simply reflect middle class membership. It is a widespread error to treat IQs as values on a simple biometric trait, as these authors do. There is no scientific basis for it. The Parisian Alfred Binet originally devised the IQ test to screen children for educational difficulties, and made clear its conceptual foundations: 'Psychologists do not measure...we classify', he said (quoted by Zenderland, 1998, p 96). This is because IQ tests are not constructed on the basis of any scientific model of intelligence: they are simply created (by statistical manipulation of item content) to identify individuals who have already been deemed to be 'intelligent' by other, more subjective, criteria. Test items are devised impressionistically by middle class psychologists and simply mimic psycholinguistic structures of schooling and middle class (eg clerical/administrative) occupations. This cultural embedding is as much true of the (superficially concealed) structures in nonverbal tests like Raven's Matrices, as of those requiring little more than simple factual knowledge (see Richardson (2002) for review). Test performance also requires certain class-related affective dispositions such as self-confidence and self-efficacy beliefs, and even status consciousness (Lovaglia et al, 2002). Of course, test preparation is much assisted by the more active encouragement for school learning found in middle class homes.

Good IQ scores thus simply reflect the educational aspirations and the cognitive, linguistic, and affective dispositions that go with middle class background. They have been shown to be quite unrelated to the truly complex cognition demanded in everyday social and practical tasks. Perhaps, the best evidence for this is the so-called 'Flynn effect'. This refers to the huge secular increases in average IQ test performances over many decades in all countries where records are available. Scarcely mentioned in this book, because fatal to its basic thesis (see below), and baffling psychologists who still think of the IQ as a biometric test, it simply reflects the rapid expansion of the middle classes, and their associated psycho-linguistic/affective dispositions. It is not a reflection of increased mental ability as such, as Flynn agrees.

In other words all they are really measuring is the size of the middle class, the rapidity of industrial development, and some sort of collective aspiration. One might be suspicious merely by considering the difference between testing an individual for intelligence (mental maturity) and trying to translate that into a national average. What they are not doing is averaging IQ tests of every person in that coutnry in a standardized set of data the reflect the same assumptions about intelligence. It's a creative construct that lends itself all too well to ideology and manipulation.


Kanazawa


Kanazawa's career Plagued by Radical Ideas

Kanazawa is a reader in management at the London School of Economics, he has set him about the task of doing battle with what he calls "political correctness." He bases his theoretical orientation in evolutionary psychology. Meaning, behind his assumptions lurk the dragon of sociolo biology, so we should suspect a link to the "Bell Curve" sort of thinking. LSE has forbig him to publish in non peer reviewed sources for a year as a result of the controversy surrounding his work.(BBC News London, 16 September 2011 Last updated at 06:41 ET "LSE Lecturer Dr. Satoshi Kanazowa Tells of Race Blog Regret"). He was fired from Psychology Today for the Blog (which I criticized on Atheistwatch) "psychology today," it was Savanna principle primarily that got him the sack (Colorofchagne.org, changing the color of Democracy June 1, 211).

Nyborg Racist Connection

Andrew Brown in the American Guardian (Andrew Brown's Blog) demonstates the racist background of the atheist assumptions.

So I did a little digging around. I downloaded the paper, which costs, alas, $37.50 with VAT, and read it carefully through. It turns out that Nyborg is an enthusiast for scientific racism. It's not just believers who are more stupid, in his world: it's black people and women, too. In a collaboration with Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster, he measured religiosity against IQ in 137 countries, and concluded that low IQ countries always had higher rates of religion. It's not religion that makes you stupid, he told a Christian paper at the time: but if you live in a very religious country, you are very likely to be stupid. And of course the correlation of religion and poverty is in global terms very clear, while the most religious continent of all is Africa.
In the paper under review, he writes,

The ultimate causal level presumes that geographically separated peoples were subjected to different evolutionary pressures over extended time-periods. Those living under the hardest of evolutionary pressures, in cold or arctic areas, were gradually and over many generations selected for enhanced g (for details of the Climate Theory, see Lynn, 2006; Rushton, 2000). They had to replace ancient pre-rational supernatural beliefs with more effective rational approaches in order to survive under the harsh conditions given. People living in warm or tropical areas enjoyed in general more relaxed selective conditions, and low g individuals were not severely punished, as their survival was not seriously compromised by uncritical reference to ancient supernatural thinking, irrational beliefs in souls, invisible worlds, Gods, forces, angels, devils, hell, or holy spirits. A contemporary belief that supernatural forces control behavior, feelings and thinking is accordingly seen as a reminiscence of pre-historic animism and magical thinking.

Oops!
(In case anyone is tempted to take this seriously, it's worth pointing out that one of the most demographically successful populations in human history were the New England puritans, many of them descendants of Vikings, who managed to combine life in a very cold climate with fervent religiosity.)
But Nyborg is entirely serious. He argues – in the spirit of Murray and Herrnstein's Bell Curve – that intelligence is IQ; IQ is biological, and biology is destiny:
(Brown quoting Nyborg)

High g individuals will gravitate towards atheism or science, will discard supernatural phenomena, and will learn fast and prosper. Average g individuals will find one of several moderate liberal denominations more to their taste, will display average learning, and will accordingly assume an intermediate socio-economic standing. Low g individuals will to submit to one of the many dogmatic denominations, will be slow learners, and will attain a low socio-economic status that accord with their limited cognitive
complexity and closed mind. Variations in disbelief, denominational complexity, educability and income are accordingly expected to follow from essentially heritable g differences, and to manifest themselves as today's mainly biologically brain based religious class differences.

By now I imagine that you are recoiling from these ideas. The belief that religion can simply be explained by stupidity suddenly looks a lot less attractive when it is presented scientifically by an intelligent man who also believes that poverty, too, can be explained by stupidity, and stupidity in its turn by race.

Abate ends her pdf file with to all humanitarian schoalrs:

Einstein did not develop E = mc² formula to create weapons of mass destruction. Neither the French Alfred Binet
developed IQ measurements for the purpose of Eugenics in the early 20th century. However, as we misuse the legacy of
Einstein to produce weapons that kill innocent people in the world, we are manipulating the works of Binet to
discriminate [6, 7], and to facilitate atresia of certain segments of the world population. History teaches us that the
Nazis misused the Idea of IQ and suggested to destroy “inferior” humans, retarded people, and any one with genetic
defects. [3] More than half a century later, Kanazawa emerged with another idea. He claims that in certain parts of the
world people die early because they are mentally retarded. Further, he asserted that education couldn’t significantly
alter the general intelligence. Should he remain unchallenged? Is the 21st Century the revival time of Eugenics?

I've commented on Kanazawa's racism in the psychology today article trying to imply that atheists are superior genetically. That's what he's really building toward.

Atheist Circular Reasoning

Atheist "Guru" HRG argues for the Multiverse. I put up the thread that says multiverse is not backed by emprical evdience that is a contradiction to the atheist credo "don't believe things without empirical evidence." Harris says "to believe things with very little empirical evidence shows something is wrong with your mind." HRG argues that our universe serves as a sample of the multiverse so we can know the MV would be life bearing.

I argue the problem is that's not empirical evidence of the multiverse. Before you can assert that our universe is a sample fof the MV you must first prove there is a MV and prove it not with math or theory but with actual empirical evidence! Overwise you are believing stuff without empricial evidence. Of course they mainly try to get out by using theoretical evidence to correlate to the idea of empirical. I can do that with God arguments.

I charge this tactic of trying to assume we live in a sample of the MV then using that prove that the MV exits is circular reasoning.


post 11

Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
that's just rationalization. I didn't experience myself I experienced something way beyond me. Me and millions of others and it's not indifferent.

HRG:

There is no objective evidence that you did not just experience an alternative state of consciousness.

Meta:

you are speaking drivel. that's a term with very little real stable meaning. Assuming you mean some irrational blick that has no objective content then such a state cannot be transformational and therefore mystical experience is proved by hundreds studies not to be a "mere alternative state." That's a chimera. The concepts of the same reality. you can't decide them up they are conceptualizing the same thing. the experiences are proved to the same.

HRG:

By what objective measuring device ? And the interpretations of this kind of experience are certainly different.

Meta:

get it through your head right now, stop your childish prattle and face the facts: ALL THE WAY.M SCALE IS OBJECTIVE IT IS AN OBJECTIVE MEASUREMENT. I'VE TOLD YOU THIS TIME AND TIME AGAIN THERE'S NO WAY IT CAN BE AN ACCENT. IT'S GOT CROSS CULTURAL VERIFICATION IN DOZEN CULTURES. THE FINDINGS ARE CONSISTENT.

It passes the rational test of being an objective replicable representative means of measuring an experience for matching criteria pertaining to that experience.

(due to the "M scale" which is a means of testing mystical experience)

that does not make it proof. that is begging the question.

HRG

OK. I'll spell it out slowly for you:

1. If the MV concept is instantiated in reality, then our local universe is a part of the MV (by definition).
2. Our local universe makes life possible (observation)

I'LL SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU! You can't prove that without circular reasoning.

you are using the assertion that we are part of it to prove that it exists based upon data form us. if we are only the universe there is then we are not part of it and you have not proved anything. YOU ARE TRYING TO USE THE THING IN QUESTION TO PROVE THE QUESTION AND ITS CIRCULAR REASONING!!!!

OF COURSE THAT'S THE DEFINITION OF CIRCULAR.



HRG:
Conclusion:

If the MV concept is instantiated in reality, then part of the MV makes life possible.

Meta

YOU HAVE NO EMPIRICAL PROOF THAT IT IS. SO YOU CAN'T CLAIM US AS EMPIRICAL PROOF BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW THAT WE ARE PART OF IT.

Atheists Caught in Contradiction can be Danderous

The atheists have told me over and over that there is no "fortress of facts." It's a phrase I narrowed to describe the atheist reliance upon a self selected process of accepting only the facts that support the atheist project and ignoring those that count against it.

The atheist son this board refuse to admit they they have this concept. Yet it's proved every time Big Thinker writes. He's a "one trick pony" no offense. BT's one trick is "we have gobs of facts about nature and stuff but you don't have any facts to back up God. Since God is an idea in the mind and you have no facts to prove he's real then he's just an idea in the mind!

that is exactly the fortress of facts. So you can't argue that it doesn't exist and isn't used when BT uses it all the time.

http://forums.carm.org/vbb/showthrea...33#post2480533
post no 14:

"The argument is that your God doesn't exist outside of your imagination. That's why all you can produce is arguments instead of factual evidence."

he had a whole thread "why aren't the theist hammering us with facts about their God?" that's saying the exact idea.

even HRG helps spread the propaganda:

post 11: ""God" is obviously a concept in human minds. It may be instantiated in reality, but where is the sufficient evidence to believe that it is ?"

here he looks to evidence in the from of "facts" as the deciding factor. Of course I've given facts for years and they are totally ignored because anything not counting for the atheist view is automatically discounted as nonsense.

Contradiction!


HRG has no facts that support Multiverse yet that's his openly real argument agaisnt God arguments. He may argue that they prove but he doesn't have any kind of positive proof except the multiverse. Yet there is no factual basis for any proof favoring it. There's no empirical evidence of it.

Its' all theoretical. mathematically based arguments are not empirical proof. Not only is he contradicting the atheist credo that we cant' believe without proof but he's also contradicting BK's one and only trick. Because without empirical proof the MV is just a concept in the mind. Apply what he says above:

MV" is obviously a concept in human minds. It may be instantiated in reality, but where is the sufficient evidence to believe that it is ?"

Ditto dark matter
string theory
ect
ect

Some of the atheists responses to this are very instructive. essentially they went ape. One tried to jack up mathematics to the level of empirical proof calling it "factual." "Mathematics are facts" he says. Therefore, the mathematical proofs of multivariate are facts too. It doesn't work that way I can do it too. Logic has facts It's a fact that an illogical argument is deemed untrue.

another such attempt is where some try to claim an "empirical bounce" for MV theory becuase it's derived from other theories that are empirically based.

Sithdoughnut says:

If this counts as empirical, why are you dismissing my examples? I can only conclude that you didn't understand me.

Let me explain: just like you're based the CA theory upon another theory, the MV is also based upon other theories. I believe (but I may be wrong), that quantum mechanics is one of them. In other words, an MV based upon QM cosmology is emprically based.

By "this" he means my big bang cosmology dependent cosmological argument. There's a huge difference. The big bang and singularity are derived from empirical data that directly demonstrates their truth. The theory of the mulitverse is derived from theories that have empirical elements, such as QM particles, but that doesn't mean there's any empirical evidence for mutliverse. They are trying to produce this "empirical bounce" where the empirical nature of one theory rubs off on another. It doesn't work that way because it's still not directly empirical. The big bang is.

Faith is Not Belief Without Proof

Originally Posted by aussiedave

Faith is a belief and does not require any intellectual basis. An "intellectual belief" is still a belief.
Neither have any facts to substantiate them.

One finds atheists saying things like this all the time. Atheists tend to define faith as "belief of soemthing without any evidence or a valid reason." for support they sometimes turn to Webster's on-line Dicitonary

Definition of FAITH

1

a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions

2

a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust

3

: something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs faith>

Of course it usually doesn't dawn on them that this is three different definitions and not a collective one. The third one can't be taken as indicative of all religious faith. There's another reason not to let them use Wesbter's, not at all. That's because it's only indicative of popular use and not theological teaching. Because they don't use a technological dictionary atheists make a straw man argument. They are not dealing with the way the teaching authority of Christian theology uses the term "faith." They are only reflecting the general conception, or misconception of faith, apart from Christian teaching. The whole idea of their argument is that Christian teaching accepts faith as belief with no evidence, when in reality there is no such dictum in any Christian teaching.

The theological authoritative dictionary for Christian Theology is called Westminster's Dictionary of Christian Theology (ed Alan Richardson and John Bowden SCM pres ltd 1983) (on Amazon). That is to the theology what the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary is to the English language. It's what Black's Law Dictionary is to the Lawyer. Really all Chrsitians should own a copy. There are two volumes one is about theologians the other about doctrines. I will concern myself today only with the latter.

The Westminster dictionary of Christian Theology has a long article on faith starting on page 207. Believers often use the term faith as a short hand term for those living according to apostolic teaching (207). The Dictionary points out that the only actual Biblical definition of faith is found in Hebrews 11.1 (evidence of things not seen) and that it "does not encapsulate all that the Bible says on the subject."(ibid). Westminster translates Hebrews 11.1 as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." This changes certain nuances but reinforces other. I have always liked to point that that faith is a kind of evidence in its own right. That's becuase something has to prompt faith. It's insane to assert that faith is ever held for no reaosn at all. Of cousre the atheist wants to assert that the reason is stupid but that's his burden of proof. What is the stimulus that prompts the response of faith?

Westminster's Dictionary understands faith in many contexts and constructs a complex picture of the term.Faith "...is an obedient confident trust in the reality love of God known through his acts, and awaiting their future consummation." (ibid). The dictionary brings out a variety of nuances from scripture. In OT faith is comparatively rare. When it is used it indicates faithfulness or loyalty rather than passive reliance. Yet dependence upon God and not human powers is important for Issiah (7:9, 30:15). Faith is concieved as Obedient action. (Dud 6:1) Faith as trust is also echoed in the psalms. In the NT belief and trust in Jesus' salvation is referred to as faith.(Mark 2:5, 5:34). Unbelief is hardness of heart, so the opposite of faith, unbelief, involves a refusal of the heart. Again making faith more a matter of some deep relationship than just a passive acceptance of an affirmation. (Mark 6:1).

There's no particular reason to understand this notion of faithfulness as bestowed for no reason. There is no statement about "faithfulness with no proof for no reason." Indeed the whole concept of faith in being about a condition of the heart is removed a step from this idea of accepting an intellectual proposition for no reason. In the Johonine epistles we see doctrinally oriented faith in a credal formula. In that community faith took on doctrinal proportions. Christ came in the flesh, Jesus is he son of God, (20:31, 1 J. 5:1). There is no indication that this is a matter of belief for no reason. NO reason is given but it's obvious the reason is bound up with the faith of the community as a community. One sees the community itself as the witness. The community as a whole testifies "we saw this, we heard this."

In Pauline Theology faith is utter reliance upon God's grace. The person of faith is the one who knows that grace cannot be obtained by works, that justification is only through union with Christ and reliance upon God's grace rather than works or by the law. Faith is not merely assent to an intellectual proposition but a relationship of trust culminating in the acceptance of God's Grace. Grace through faith means reliance upon God's ability to make us holy, nothing of our own effort.

The article points out several tensions that emerge from the centrality of faith to Christian doctrine. This is the kind of subtle theological idea that makes theology interesting and maddening to atheist who can't think subtly. Tension is mistaken for contradiction by skeptics but it's not contradiction. It's a good thing in theology to have tension. As one of my professors at Perkins (school of ethology SMU) put it "if you have no tension on your kite string your kite is not in the air."

One such tension is between weather faith is the response of trust in God or the acceptance of doctrinal propositions.The issues clearly transcend the notion of faith as rule keeping or merely an acceptance of intellectual propositions.

The article winds up with a discussion of Kierkegaard's notion of the leap of faith. This mind tend to make one think that faith means the irrational acceptance of of a proposition with no evidence.SK says faith is irrational and that it's achieved by an irrational leap. Yet one must note that the leap itself is an epistemological ploy, it's an attempt to get over the final chasm which can't be bridged by evidence or logic. The road up to the final gap can be paved with argument and reason. One can make a find philosophical diving board to prepare for the leap. The point at which one makes the leap can be narrowed. The leap is always there. Even in the world view there are epistemic blind alleys from which there are no returns. So in the final analysis there is no basis to the atheist straw man definition of faith as "believing things without evidence."

Forged Statistics and Bait and Switch: Are Chrsitians More LIkely to Commit Crimes?

I came accross a blog Atheism Recourse. com which after all these years is still preading the Paul stuff.

Congratulations atheists… you are more well-behaved than the rest of society. No, this isn’t a “pat you on the back” piece. But, I think it’s important for us to remember that we ARE moral people that know how to be good citizens without a divine babysitter telling us what’s right and wrong. And, there is evidence to show that this is correct.

In 2005, the Kripke Center released a detailed study called, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies.” Long title, I know. But, what it said was very important and gets overlooked by many atheists. Keep in mind, the Kripke Center ISN’T secular and has no reason to promote a secular view. According to their own website, “The Kripke Center is dedicated to facilitating scholarly activity in the areas of religion and society. Special attention is given to promoting understanding between and among faith communities, including especially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Kripke Center’s primary audience is the academic community, but its scholarship and services are available to all who seek them. The Center is named in honor of Rabbi Myer and Dorothy Kripke.” The study had some amazing discoveries. They concluded:

The sturdy they quote (Jensen, Vanderbuilt) sites the Paul "study" for it's factual basis (2005). That so called stud is totally disparaged by sociologists. Paul was not a social scientist and his alleged study was panned by critics as methodologically disastrous.






Jensen himself says Paul's study was too simplistic:

That analysis, however, was based on scatterplots
for eighteen “prosperous nations” and focused primarily
on the United States compared to Asecular@ nations. Because
there are numerous dimensions to religiosity and a variety of
alternative explanations of homicide rates, a more complex
analysis is required before more definitive conclusions can be
reached. This study attempts such an analysis for a much
larger sample of nations and tests Durkheim=s hypothesis that
religious passion as a variable characteristic of nations is a
positive correlate of homicide rates

He does a multiple regression analysis. There's enough scholarly caution in the Jesen conclusion to argue that the original Atheist resource.com article's conclusion is totally unwarranted.

There are obvious limitations to this analysis, and just
as sociologists should not over-generalize about the positive
effects of religion based on prior research, negative
consequences have not been established conclusively. The data
are cross-sectional and the temporal links among the variables
studied have not been established. Moreover, the analysis is a
secondary analysis of data that have already been collected
which limits their applicability to more complex arguments.
Yet, this analysis is the first step towards a more
meaningful specification of the complex links between
religiosity and homicide rates at the ecological level using
nations as units of analysis. Some of the results are
remarkably consistent with Durkheim=s passion hypothesis about
religion and homicide and are contrary to over-generalizations
about religion as a barrier to crime. On the other hand,
relatively secular nations do not have lower homicide rates
than nations where people accept God and Heaven, but do not
embrace their malevolent counterparts, the Devil and Hell.

Of cousre they don't quote that. There's more reason than that to suspect the data. The article on the Atheist Resource Blogs goes back to a tale of statistics not in the Jensen study but quotes a bogus table of statistics that was cmpied by Denise Golumbaski, Research Analyst for the Federal Bureau of Prisons released the following numbers in 1997 under the Freedom of Information Act. Atheists have been kicking around this research for a long time Its' proved by adherents.com to be bogus. The explanation on Adherent.com

David Rice has written to us (23 October 2002) concerning the origin of the data in the table below: The data came from Denise Golumbaski, who was a Research Analyst for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The data was compiled from up-to-the-day figures on March 5th, 1997. (Note that as of the year 1999, Analyst Golumbaski is no longer working for the Federal Bureau of Prisons; I had telephoned Analyst Golumbaski to request the latest figures, and was told by another analyst that Golumbaski was no longer employed there.) The data was requested by Mr. Rod Swift, who passed it on to me for my web site. I later called the Federal Bureau of Prisons and confirmed that the data did in fact come from their database.

This data was put up on Boyd Swift's website. strangely enough it changed. The atheists don't quote Golumbasky they quote from the Swift site so the facts are wrong. Read all about in my pages on Doxa. I can't put up a

This is the actual data Swift had to work wtih and Rice documents that fact, here it is:

19.908%

Response	Number	%
Catholic	29267	39.164%
Protestant	26162	35.008%
None/Atheist/Unknown	18,537
Muslim	5435	7.273%
American Indian	2408	3.222%
Nation	1734	2.320%
Rasta	1485	1.987%
Jewish	1325	1.773%
Church of Christ	1303	1.744%
Pentecostal	1093	1.463%
Moorish	1066	1.426%
Buddhist	882	1.180%
Jehovah Witness	665	0.890%
Adventist	621	0.831%
Orthodox	375	0.502%
Mormon	298	0.399%
Scientology	190	0.254%
Atheist	156	0.209%
Hindu	119	0.159%
Santeria	117	0.157%
Sikh	14	0.019%
Bahai	9	0.012%
Krishna	7	0.009

One attempt at this bogus atheist social sciences is a site by Boyd Swift. Swift, thought he would be a wrote the bureaus of prisons for stats, but unfortunately he doesn't know how to read a table.

Response	Number	%
Catholic	29267	39.164%
Protestant	26162	35.008%
Muslim	5435	7.273%
American Indian	2408	3.222%
Nation	1734	2.320%
Rasta	1485	1.987%
Jewish	1325	1.773%
Church of Christ	1303	1.744%
Pentecostal	1093	1.463%
Moorish	1066	1.426%
Buddhist	882	1.180%
Jehovah Witness	665	0.890%
Adventist	621	0.831%
Orthodox	375	0.502%
Mormon	298	0.399%
Scientology	190	0.254%
Atheist	156	0.209%
Hindu	119	0.159%
Santeria	117	0.157%
Sikh	14	0.019%
Bahai	9	0.012%
Krishna	7	0.009%

---------------------------- -------- Total Known Responses 74731 100.001% (rounding to 3 digits does this) Unknown/No Answer 18381 What's really intereting is what Adherents.com has to say about these stats and Swifts website. Here is a letter by researcher on Adherents.com who checked out Swift's data: Adherents.com


I have represented both talbes exactly as they appear on the adherents.com website.

Several interesting points. The original says "National of Islam," Swift's Version says "Nation" only. The Original puts Muslims at 5.837% While Swift's version puts them at 7.273%. Swift's has Mormons as seventh from bottom. The original doesn't have Mormons on it.

What's really interesting is the major difference for our puposes, the original includes "none/ahteist/unknown as third from the top. Swift puts them much further down. The Originals give the atheist category almost 20% while Swist tives it 0.2% or less.

Examine this table with the one above.


Swift's Table


On Swift's table there is no mention of atheist in the first five and atheist is listed fifth from the bottom. In that table atheist is 0.209%. Now here is the table sent by the Bureau of prisons to Rice, first five:,br>

In this table Atheist/unknown/none is third form top and has 19%! Fifth from the bottom on this version is not atheist but "Hindu." So the version sent by the Bureau of Prisons is significantly different than the version put up by Swift.

It seems Swift misrepresented the data.

So in other words, the actual number of atheists is about a quarter as high as the Christians. It's not this tiny 0.something percent, it's actually pretty high.
It's pretty clear he fabricated the data. These mistakes are too far off to be merely mistakes in recording.

Swist goes on to expalin how the disproportionate number of atheists in prison from the general population means they are so far better behaved than Christians.

Now, let's just deal with the nasty Christian types, no? "Judeo-Christian Total 62594 83.761% (of the 74731 total responses) Total Known Responses 74731 Not unexpected as a result. Note that atheists, being a moderate proportion of the USA population (about 8-16%) are disproportionately less in the prison populations (0.21%)."

Of course he's distorting these figures too because it's not 8% certianly not 16%. He's including people who believe in God but don't like organized religion as well as agnostics as atheists. He's also dealing with his flase figures. The actual figure is 20% atheists in prison and 3% in society. So what does this tell us? Atheist are a lot less well behaved.

adherents.com
answers Swift's page directly:

One atheist web page (http://holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm) presented statistics stating that 0.209% of federal prisoners (in 1997) stated "atheist" as their religious preference. This site said that this is far less than the 8 to 16% of the American population that are atheists.

The atheist site, however, provided no source for the notion that "8 to 16%" of Americans are atheists. This statistic is completely without support from the available data. Gallup polls which include questions about religion have consistently shown that between 93 and 96% of Americans say that they believe in God. Presumably atheist writers would not suggest that up to half of their claimed "atheists" believe in God. The actual proportion of atheists in the United States is about 0.5% (half of one percent). This is the figure obtained from the largest survey of religious preference ever conducted: the National Survey of Religious Identification (Kosmin, 1990), which polled 113,000 people. The religious preference questions were part of questioning completely unrelated to religious preference (consumer preferences, entertainment, etc.), so the frequent retort of atheists that their numbers don't like to admit to atheism, and hence are undercounted, is unlikely.

Atheists play a little game where they refuse to accept the fac thtat there are distinctions between really have a devotion to a faith and merely having a passing identification. They play this game so they can say that all the bad things of history are done by Christians and Christians can't say "O but they weren't real Christians." Yet real sociologists (which is more than just a matter of dedication but of real credentials) say that there is a valid distinction and not all people who say "I am a Christian" are really examples of dedication to that faith. The refusal to account for depth of commitment is a real flaw in Swist's thinking and this is exactly what adherents.com points out:

Thus, some commentators on one side have claimed that being religious is associated with incarceration. This is based only on religious preference statistics. American sociologists are well aware that nearly all Americans profess a religious preference. But there is a major difference between those who are actually religious affiliated, that is, members of a congregation (approx. 45 to 65% of the population, varying by region), and those who merely profess a preference, likely the name of the denomination that their parents of grandparents were a part of. (One of the best discussions of this phenomenon can be found in The Churching of America, 1776-1990, by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark; New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992.)

On that same page adherents.com quotes Bureau of Justice Statistics (National Census of the Jail Population 12/31/95):

72% affirm Christianity

54% actually declare themselves religious

Only 33% actually pracitce their faith (by attending chruch).


Sociologists would laugh themselves silly over the simplistic nature of Swift's thinking. It's just not enough to assume from raw data on the afflictions of prision population that some belief system leads to crime. From that same adherents.com page:

Thus, some commentators on one side have claimed that being religious is associated with incarceration. This is based only on religious preference statistics. American sociologists are well aware that nearly all Americans profess a religious preference. But there is a major difference between those who are actually religious affiliated, that is, members of a congregation (approx. 45 to 65% of the population, varying by region), and those who merely profess a preference, likely the name of the denomination that their parents of grandparents were a part of. (One of the best discussions of this phenomenon can be found in The Churching of America, 1776-1990, by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark; New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992.)

As that same article points out someone on a survey answering "Im a Methodist" is virtually meaningless, not sociologically it is meaningless, becuase that person may be just remembering the affliction of the family or the grandparents or parents, not his own actual feelings. A more reliable indication is enrollment on chruch rolls. Even more reliable than that is chruch attendance.

What this guy has done on the Atheist resource Blog is to recognize the need for complex data analysis, pretend like he has it in quoting the Jensen study, but instead of quoting the conclusion which is doubtful about proving anything he substitutes (bait and switch) the bogus data. Here we have before our eyes a very sloppy attempt at leisure De main a bit and switch in which he sticks in the propaganda with te phony data in such a way (although badly done) as to give the impression that it's in sink with the study he sites.

Category: Athesits Say the Dardest Things: Now I've heard it all.

On CARM The little attack dog "Blondie" (aka Steve Smith) is involved in trying to prove that Chrsitians have persecuted more people than communism did. He argues that he doesn't have to use documents to prove that Christians murdered thousandth of people because "everyone knows it."

see post 20

The simple fact that the Roman Empire went from pagan to Christian in one generation is proof of widespread persecution and murder. Lots of examples were listed in the OP and if you bother to do a little research you can find a lot more.

Then he accuses me of special pleading.

I would like to move on to serous articles but I just have to show some of these statements he's made becuase I can't believe how absurd they are. In trying to prove that Christians have persecuted more than atheists he actually tries to argue that Christians were in charge of communism!

post 20 again:

The communist/atheist argument is stupid. I'm glad you are not above resorting to the fundamentalist thinking you seem to hate more than anyone. Theists killed more people in the 20th century than atheists. This is assuming that the entire USSR was atheist. Given the fact that this was never the case and the majority of the USSR was always Christian your point is even more wrong.

This is the "simple fact?" The majority were Christians but that doesn't mean they were in charge of anything. They lived in an oligarchy, remember? At this point I was spitting milk through my nose. So he tries to explain how the figures it.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

that's a totally ridiculous statement. that's not proof of any kind. That requires that most of your assumptions you must prove in themselves before you can advance them as proof.

Blondie

Your ignorance of easily researched facts is not an argument.

You can either believe I have already looked it up or do it yourself.

So I'm supposed to just believe his word because he tells me to, and I"M SPECIAL PLEADING!??

Originally Posted by Metacrock

are you saying the non communist people of USSR had a big say in their movement?

Blindie:

No, I'm saying that theists killed a lot more people than atheists in the 20th century and this argument that fundamentalists like to bring up about atheist killings is just stupid. It is factually wrong. It shows how apologists just parrot these things without even bothering to think about them or look it up.

The fact about the USSR being mostly Christian is just icing on the cake.

icing on what cake? one on Mars!?? here' his most rational statement.

wonderboy:

"The Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 forced Stalin to enlist the Russian Orthodox Church as an ally to arouse Russian patriotism against foreign aggression. Russian Orthodox religious life experienced a revival: thousands of churches were reopened; there were 22,000 by the time Nikita Khrushchev came to power. The regime permitted religious publications, and church membership grew."

Like I said. This is just icing on the cake.

The fact is theists killed more people than atheists in the 20th century. Please stop saying otherwise. It just makes you look ignorant or dishonest.

So all the soldiers defending Stalin are Christians becuase the Orthodox chruch was asked to raise an army. That magically makes Chrsitians responsible for all of Stalin's murders? That's a hyperbolic and rhetorical question. Could he really be so dense as to think there's a comparison between people defending their country form attack by Nazis and Communists murdering people for their faith? They weren't murdering Nazis for their faith they were defending their country form invasion. They didn't do it because the chruch commanded them to but becasue they were forced to by Stalin.

This guy is truly living in his own private world if he thinks he can transform victims of Stalin's rule into murderers themselves because they fought in a war? This is the great genius who wants to prove that I'm so stupid I have no scholarship.

incredibly atheists are actually defending this guy. this shows how totally without honor they are. So totally sold out to hating Chrsitians they can't be honest about the mot obvious things.

asked if they agree that Chrsitians were in charge in the USSR
drugstar says:

humans are beings. god is the ground of being. therefore god killed them all.

others of them are going "I don't understand what you are saying." The famous HRG actually argues with Bondie that Christians were in charge of the USSR!


What's really funny is read the other thread I put up where I ask atheists in general if they agree. They are all hard at work avoiding admitting that he said crazy things.