Atheistwatch

Friday, July 20, 2012

Atheists Have No Meaning in life, That's the Way They Like It

Atheists and theists have had a long running battle on message boards, the issue surfaces now and then about meaning in life. The theist claims that belief in God gives meaning and purpose the atheists argue that they have their own meaning and don't need God to give them meaning. I have always argued that atheist meaning is by definition and of necessity localized, temporal, something that can and will be discorded easily and soon. It will have no meaning or purpose when we are worm food. Life ends, no one remembers we might as well not be conscious. Atheist always balk and insist that their meaning is true meaning and it's perfect and gives them warm fuzzies. I am not assuming that all atheists agree with the same vision of a meaningful life or lack there of. But finally some atheists no CARM just come out and admit they have no meaning and they don't care.

CARM July 11
Godless panther

It's established that there is no purpose nor meaning in my life. Do I ever wish there were? No.

Absolutely not. I look at G2U -- one who does have purpose and meaning in his life and he is unable to grasp the simplest concepts because he is so busy mindlessly repeating that other people have no purpose and meaning in their lives like some sort of demented parrot or a broken record in a bad dream.

So, in light of seeing one whose life is filled with purpose and meaning, I must say that I am incredibly grateful that my life has none.I feel so lucky. I feel like celebrating. Pop open a bottle of champagne an toast to my life having no purpose and no meaning -- CHEERS!

I understand that he's trying to be cleaver. He's not really saying "I have no meaning" he's saying "get off my back about the meaning you think you have, my meaning is good for me. " I"m sure that's true but look how carried away the they get with it. It's really just an attempt to mocks others for having meaning. As each one in succession makes a declaration of no meaning it becomes apparent they really know they have no meaning and they don't care.

frosty

This is my world view, and preference, just to be clear.

Do I have some grand meaning or purpose? No.
Do others have some grand meaning or purpose? No.
Do others believe they have some grand meaning or purpose? Sure.
Does the authenticity of that meaning or purpose matter? Doesn't appear to.
Do I WANT some grand meaning or purpose? No, I don't value it in any way.

I asked G2U to clarify exactly what kind of benefit that having meaning or purpose brings, and explain why we should value that, needless to say I didn't get a direct or coherent response.

Furthermore it doesn't appear that the basis for the meaning and purpose in peoples lives needs to be grounded in reality to have whatever value G2U seems to think it has, so there's nothing to really stop atheists from inventing their own meaning and purpose and cite whatever source they please.

Hispid:

There's no such thing as eternal purpose or meaning. There's just what you choose for how long you keep it.

don't ask me what that means

Sithdonut

My "meaning" lives for as long as I exist or as long as the universe exists - whichever is longer. Either I continue to exist (it doesn't matter where; both heaven and hell promise eternity) and so the effect of my existence continues to happen, or I die and stop existing, but the impact I've had on the universe (even if it is simply the exact distribution of atoms) exists until the universe ends, assuming that it does. Both situations promise eternal meaning and purpose.

In other words, meaning is relative and discordable, atheist "meaning' is not meaning in any real sense. Whatever happens happens and he doesn't care.

Howard Holmes

If a life of only five years has no meaning, what could give meaning to a life of ten?
If a life of only eighty years has no meaning, what could give meaning to a life of forever? What will you be doing a million years from now that has more meaning than what you are doing now?

Of coure there doesn't seem to be any sort of real attempt to think about what goes into the life to make it meaningful. They don't seem to connect with what purpose is. They don't have a purpose so they can't imagine having one. These guys seem really pointless in their existence. They don't have sense of living fo anything except maybe monetary pleasure. That's ok I don't mind that. It does seem kind of empty they can't really seem to understand that there are people who are not content with that. It's there business how they want live, if they are happy being cynical and burned out that's their business but they can't accept that not everyone is that way. I get the feeling they think something's wrong with you if you are not cynical and burned out.

God gives us hope these guys are without hope. They are just ready to become worm food or fertilize the garden and it makes them feel good to think about non existence. That just seems burned out and hopeless. They mock adn ridicule the idea of having hope. Look at the things they are saying about "what kind fo meaning is it to have a 80 year life?" What did you put into it? What will you be doing in a million years that you are not doing now? O beholding the essence of truth and reality face to face, maybe traveling the universe in the twinkle of an eye understanding all mysteries and grooving on the basis of love and goodness. These are all turn offs for these guys. They can't imagine wanting that.

The meaning argument is not much good. It really is a subjective matter, and you really can't prove to someone "your meaning is not meaningful, mine is better." As a statement of personal testimony it's a good thing to talk about. We can't think of it as a "proof" of anything but it may important to let people know that our relationships with God do give us meaning and purpose.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Prayer Studies and Atheist Echo Chamber

Lourdes

François-Bernard Michel,
Lourdes Medical committee and National Academy Medicine
France

The atheist propaganda machine is cranking away. I try to look for "studies that prove prayer works" I get a bunch of blogs about how prayer is stupid and doesn't work. There's a good article in Christianity Today talking about the limitations of double blind prayer studies. Then at least one blog registering disgust with the article. the basic argument in the article is we can't control for God's actions so we can't study it. They even quote C.S. Lewis saying this.

C.S. Lewis anticipated a carefully designed prayer study, but did not think it would show any positive, measurable "results." "The trouble is that I do not see how any real prayer could go on under such conditions," Lewis said. "Simply to say prayers is not to pray; otherwise a team of properly trained parrots would serve as well as men for our experiment." He argued that this approach to prayer treats it "as if it were magic, or a machine—something that functions automatically"—an accusation unintentionally but prophetically aimed at STEP and the other well-meaning attempts to measure the effects of prayer. If Lewis is right, such attempts always end up trying to measure something more akin to magic than a real movement of God.

The atheist attitude: hey don't confuse me with the facts of all that methodology stuff. Prayer didn't work all we need to know, can the details.

Here's a humanist piece that actually admits you can't control for outside prayer (the CT article says 91% of the anti-prayer study they considered said they had outside prayer.

Hector Avaelos (my old nemesis
form Loftus's blog)
Council for Secular Humanism

The problem with this and any so-called controlled experiment regarding prayer is that there can be no such thing as a controlled experiment concerning prayer. You can never divide people into groups that received prayer and those that did not. The main reason is that there is no way to know that someone did not receive prayer. How would anyone know that some distant relative was not praying for a member of the group that Byrd had identified as having received no prayer? How does one control for prayers said on behalf of all the sick people in the world? How does one assess the degree of faith in patients that are too sick to be interviewed or in the persons performing the prayers? Even Byrd acknowledges these problems and admits that "'pure' groups were not attained in this study." Since control groups are not possible, such purported scientific experiments are not possible.*

Of course this is ignored by atheists on message boards so they can argue that the study actually disproves prayer.

The Dawkies express hatred for religious thinkers and source connected to theological institution. can't believe the Lourdes stuff because they must be liars since they have religious people on the committee.

For example I quote on my miracle page on Doxa this quotation by a respected secular reporter who writes about the good rules the Lourdes miracle committee uses:

MODERN MIRACLES HAVE STRICT RULES

BY DAVID VAN BIEMA

The paradox of human miracle assessment is that the only way to discern whether a phenomenon is supernatural is by having trained rationalists testify that it outstrips their training. Since most wonders admitted by the modern church are medical cures, it consults with doctors. Di Ruberto has access to a pool of 60 - "We've got all the medical branches covered," says his colleague, Dr. Ennio Ensoli - and assigns each purported miracle to two specialists on the vanquished ailment.

They apply criteria established in the 1700s by Pope Benedict XIV: among them, that the disease was serious; that there was objective proof of its existence; that other treatments failed; and that the cure was rapid and lasting. Any one can be a stumbling block. Pain, explains Ensoli, means little: "Someone might say he feels bad, but how do you measure that?" Leukemia remissions are not considered until they have lasted a decade. A cure attributable to human effort, however prayed for, is insufficient. "Sometimes we have cases that you could call exceptional, but that's not enough." says Ensoli. "Exceptional doesn't mean inexplicable."

"Inexplicable," or inspiegabile, is the happy label that Di Ruberto, the doctors and several other clerics in the Vatican's "medical conference" give to a case if it survives their scrutiny. It then passes to a panel of theologians, who must determine whether the inexplicable resulted from prayer. If so, the miracle is usually approved by a caucus of Cardinals and the Pope.

Some find the process all too rigorous. Says Father Paolino Rossi, whose job, in effect, is lobbying for would-be saints from his own Capuchin order: "It's pretty disappointing when you work for years and years and then see the miracle get rejected." But others suggest it could be stricter still.

There is another major miracle-validating body in the Catholic world: the International Medical Committee for the shrine at Lourdes. Since miracles at Lourdes are all ascribed to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, it is not caught up in the saint-making process, which some believe the Pope has running overtime. Roger Pilon, the head of Lourdes' committee, notes that he and his colleagues have not approved a miracle since 1989, while the Vatican recommended 12 in 1994 alone. "Are we too severe?" he wonders out loud. "Are they really using the same criteria?"

Atheist Troll "Backup" transforms the secular journalist Van Beema who is well respected into a "religious person" becasue he needs him to be one since he documents the good rules of the Lourdes Medical committee. Of cousre the implication being as a "religious nut" he's lying. They don't really have those rules because he's religious so he must lie.

This highlights how these Dawkies never listen to any source but their own. I have made a practice in my reserach of mostly using non Christian sources so they can't charge bias. Yet they have called Thomas Kuhn (one of the most highly respected secular thinkers) a "creationist." He was probalby an atheist or at least agnostic. He was most certainly a Darwinian.

On a few topics I use religious people because they did the work. This is met with the Bromide "he's a religious person he must be lying." If I said this about the atheist nut job Harris or Dawkins of course Dawkies would have a fit.

they actually can't see that Harris is the Craig of atheism and Dawkins is the Pat Robertson of atheism.

None of them can critically evaluate the nature of evidence. they just dogmatically assume any religious source has to be lying. They would resent that kid of analysis of their own most biased sources.

These guys are ghettoized. they just listen to their own guys and no one else.

On today's edition of Metacrock's Blog I post my essay "Analysis of Correlation and Causality in Miracle Hunting" which makes the point that claims of miracle are as much an epistemological problem as they are a scientific question, or even more so.

Hooks says:

"It's suspicious to say there's a professor on the medical committee. This must be a lie because no professor would ever support belief in healing," (of course they could still be on the committee--they actually use skeptics on the committee). Of the atheists are assuming the job of the committee is to "make up" or rubber stamp "miracles." If they they actual studied their work they would see this is foolish. There are 7000 "remarkably cases" that were rejected and only 67 miracles that made it to that status. If it's really a rubber stamp why don't they have 7067 miracles?

Here's a quote that proves they use professors:

http://www.ncregister.com/site/artic...ourdes_shrine/

"Professor François-Bernard Michel, co-chairman of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes and a member of the French Academy of Medicine, said in a March 2006 statement “there is no sick person coming to Lourdes who has never received treatment, and that is how it should be. This pushing forward of medicine has achieved such a degree of sophistication that it is more difficult than ever to appreciate in a cure what is applicable to treatment and what is attributable to an inexplicable medical phenomenon.”

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/site/artic...#ixzz20t5cU7l7

O but it's from a catholic source it must be a lie. cant' reserach it or find out becuase it has to be a lie because it's in a Catholic site. all religious people lie. atheist never do.

here is a site of the french academy of medicine. we see Dr. Michel is on the board got his picture there.

http://www.academie-medecine.fr/orga....cfm?langue=fr

could the catholic site just lie and say he's on the Lourdes committee when he's not? do you think the don't have libel laws in France?

*I removed fn 8 from this quote because it was no longer available on the net.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Catching up with Atheist Comments

Just a couple of comments I think deserve the spot light, so I can debunk them! :-)

thanks for your comments.

May 28, 2012 5:36 AM

Josip Kuleš said...

The fact is that the Bible does encourage violence, you talk of evidence, when you have none either. Atheists do not believe in things without evidence, you do, that is the only difference. Don't get me wrong, atheists that say they know god does not exist is equaly annoyng as fundamentalists. The only problem i have with people like you is that you think everything you don't like is religious persecution. No one ever didn't get a job because they were christian, but that happens to atheists, that is persecution, but if i call your religion stupid that is my opinion and i have a right to express it, if it offends you that is not my problem. (sorry about my grammar, english is not mi first language). My name is Josip Kules, and i don't care if you delete this.

The Bible dos not encourage violence. There is no passage that says "make ye some violence." It dos say things like "blessed are the peace makers," and "be not a fighter or brawler." Ancinet Israel emerged from a very violent milieu in a bloodthirsty era. They had to fight to survive. The OT is largely based upon the nationalism they mustered in order to foster that survive. So depict heroic battles with the children of Israel standing up to the bullies. It's not more encourage violence than it is encouraging peace.

Atheists claim to believe in evidence, but when they need some propaganda of a scientific theory it doesn't matter weather they have evidence or not. there is no empirical evidence of the Multiverse. None there is none at all not one little centiliter. They need the multiversse to beat fine truning and CA so they talk about like it's a proved fact. It's way way way beyond proved. They are pulling universes out of their you know whats.

You have no idea what my attitudes are toward rebellious persecution. There is genuine persecution n message boards but I'm not sure that's a big deal.It's only a big deal if you are a message board addict like me. you don't know anything about who gets jobs. yu have no empirical reserach. You are assuming no one is turned away for being a Christian. I'm sure you could find that somewhere. For one thing it happens in sociology.

You have a right to express your opinion and say that religion is stupid if you think it is but:

(1) It's an expression of bigotry and hate. Weather you have a right to express it or or not. You probalby have a right to express racism too, but I'm willing you wont cling that one so vehemently. Doesn't make you any less bigoted just becuase you have a right.

(2) when you express that on a message board where Chrsitians ware restraining themselves and trying to conduct a serious discussion it's disruptive and unfair.

(3) probalby an expression of hate.

(4) you don't have a right to get personal. you try to attack teh person rather than the idea because they are religious (you stereotype people a because you are narrow minded). That's not right you don't' have a right to do that.

I didn't delete your comment you didn't attack anyone personally.

Old friend and Loyal oppoent Bill Walker:

Hi Meta, EVERYONE was born an atheist. Then, depending on parents & geography, you get one dumped on you by your parents, who got it from theirs, etc. Religions - ALL of them, are dragged through the centuries, sort of like a cosmic security blanket. I realize that I'm one of a small minority. But take a look at Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, & most of Western Europe. Our hotbed of Xianity, has a much greater incidence of crime than everyone else. I have wondered if Xianity is too forgiving. We non-believers have to live with all of our deeds & misdeeds. Perhaps this is why only one fifth of one percent of everyone in prison is a professed atheist in the U.S.A. . We have over 3 million in our prison system. That's a huge disparity. Oddly enough, the 'bible belt' has a much greater percentage of prisoners in out penal system than the more secular states.

Everyone is not born an atheist. That is a misconception and ignores what we now know about the God modul (so called). That's a misnomer but there is scientific evidence that there's an innate concept of God that all or most of us are born with.

You have an interesting spin on the crime issue. Some try to say that athist northern Eroupe is more free of crime than Christian America. You try to sell it as America being too lenient due to Christian background. The conservatives would (see comment section) argue that it's the liberals that are too lenient. Surely atheists are supposed to think that Christians are narrow minded and want to kill criminals.

Your assertions about prison population have been disproved. The atheist website that makes that arguemnt the bogus atheist study that makes it are lies. They are proved to be lies and the statistics they are are fabricated. I caught them and adherents.com also caught them before me in the lie. this is proved. They changed the data to grossly underestimate the numbers of atheists in prison.

It's no secret that not all chruch going people understand that being a Christian is a personal relationship with God not just going to chruch and reading the bible. Way too many "Chrsitians" understand it only a set of rules and behaviors. Only about 33% of the 73% who identify as Christians actually claim to be "born again."

A lot of those in prison begin claiming they are Christians to get parole or to get things easier in jail. Many are no doubt scared. So they are caught they think back to going to chruch a few times as a kid and say "I went to chruch as a kid didn't do me any good I don't' really believe that stuff." A couple of months latter they find themselves in prison with all the violent people aground and fearing everything. They start saying "I'm a Christian" in hopes God will protect them. The prison statistics don't reflect the time line on conversion.

click here for proof atheists fabricated prison stats.

click here for link to God on the Brain (not born atheists)

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Frank Admittion from Atheists that they refuse to consider ideas oppossed to thier own

Op is pretty long. CARM it's about the Tillich argument argument that truth is a prori, they can't even agree to that.
Deist says "it's not op it's a book."

Deist:

Anyone can cut and paste bible quotes or book chapters. It's original thoughts that seems difficult for you and the resident Christians.

Rarely do you see non believers pasting book chapters into an OP. The non believers here so outclass the Christians here that you would be far better off cutting and pasting their wisdom. The truth doesn't need to be cut and pasted.

Reply With Quote Blog this Post

if you read the Op you see it's not cutting and pasting it's actually summarizing an article I read.

Big Thinker:

We refuse to read it because its a meaningless, garbage attempt at looking more intelligent and thoughtful than you are.
All of your long OP's are undone with short, simple concepts.
And we really don't care why you believe what you believe. What we are interested in is whether or not you can demonstrate (outside of your imagination) that God exists outside of your imagination. The rest is pretty much meaningless.

On another thread I used that to say "you don't want truth" here's what they said there.

Meta:

God wants us to search for truth. The reason is because when we search we interlinear the values of the good. without that we would resent the answer when we discover there's really no alternative to God existing.

Atheist refuse to search. they want it handed to them, they want to be forced. That's a childish pout. that's a tactic it's not truth seeking. if they wanted truth they would seek.

BT:

I can't reason using your special rules of logic that basically say whatever you believe is correct.
Talking to me is a waste of your time because your logic and reasoning is inconsistent.

Boy I'll sure go along with you on that one. you sure can't.

BT:

Its not about perfect agreement, its about truth. Are there "shades of gray" between not-truth and truth?

God is not going to "hand it to you" because God is imaginary... Meta's claims about God are nonsense (bsjkvbeuleije).

Originally Posted by Metacrock

Atheist refuse to search. they want it handed to them, they want to be forced. That's a childish pout. that's a tactic it's not truth seeking. if they wanted truth they would seek.

Mary Jane:

Of course, you have no support for this claim. Similarly, I could claim that you refuse to seek the truth and if you did seek the truth, you would realize that there is no God. Of course, that would be a silly argument, just like your claim is silly.

These guys waste a huge amount of mental energy hiding from the logic and facts that support the Christian faith.

What Does the "God Particle" Mean for God Talk?

We have all heard the news that the so called "God particle" has been found through a "atom smasher" and this confirms our basic view of the universe. This is the Higgs Boson particle that gives mass to the universe. Actually, it's only confirmed to be "a Higgs Boson," there are about five types it's too soon to say which type. The discoveries helps to anchor the basic theory now has prominence in big bang and sub atomic particles. Atheists are quick to jump on the bang wagon declare this a victory over religion. On the CARM board an atheist postor called "Jagella" says:
"God particle found" posts 5 and 10

5
Crock, the apparent discovery of the Higgs boson demonstrates that science, once again, is the way to know the world we live in. As we make such discoveries, we keep closing the gaps that some people put gods into. To maintain belief in whatever god you believe in, you often need to ignore or deny these kinds of scientific discoveries.

10
The Higg's boson also known as "the God particle" is a hypothetical subatomic particle that has been reported to have been recently discovered. Bosons are particles that carry forces such as the strong nuclear force. The Higg's boson reputedly gives mass to objects. Mass is a measure of inertia or the tendency of a body at rest to stay at rest or a body in motion to stay in motion.

So what might the discovery of the Higg's boson have to do with atheism? Well, I suppose that now we can safely say that no god gives mass to objects! Broadly speaking, the more we know about nature, as Carl Sagan has said, the less there is for God to do. Scientists are quickly closing the gaps that one god or other used to fit into to "explain" some aspect of nature. I predict that the Higgs boson will continue this trend, and a full, naturalistic explanation for existence will soon be available if it isn't already available.

Jagella

Now we can say safely that no god gives mass to objects? That conjures up the ancient view of God opening doors in the volt of heaven to pour water through into rain. I've always known that the atheist straw God was basally a big man in the sky but this is absurd. This "Jagella" person must be desperate to get God out of the picture. I guess if the wind blows form the West that totally disproves God. Or if moss grows on the north side of a tree this person rests easy form the fear of hell. The truth of it is this has nothing to do with God at all. Calling "God particle" hardly makes it a test of God's existence. It's still a problem to determine where the particle came from the basic set of laws and the whole set up that could produce a particle. That assumes that the real reason to believe in God is based upon the need to explain things. When will get it the point that the only thing scinece is going to tell us about God is the potential nature of the way he did things.

There are a couple of more important points to be made about the discovery. First we should notice the tenuous nature of the language used to describe it:

CBC News
7/4/12

"We can safely conclude something new is there. … All the evidence suggests it's the Higgs boson, but the results released today just aren't strong enough to conclude that it is the Higgs."

Sinervo said he expects the CERN research teams to have two to three times more data to analyse by the end of the year.

"Will we be able to conclude that it is the Higgs by the end of the year? It depends what you mean by 'conclude,' but we'll at least have some strong data," he said.

Does this mean they don't really know now? why does it have to be confirmed? Why can't they conclude it now?

National Geographic Daily News

Although preliminary, the results show a so-called five-sigma of significance, which means that there is only a one in a million chance that the Higgs-like signal the teams observed is a statistical fluke...
CERN head Heuer called today's announcement a "historic milestone" but cautioned that much work lies ahead as physicists attempt to confirm the newfound particle's identity and further probe its properties...
For example, though the teams are certain the new particle has the proper mass for the predicted Higgs boson, they still need to determine whether it behaves as the God particle is thought to behave—and therefore what its role in the creation and maintenance of the universe is...
A two-sigma finding translates to about a 95 percent chance that results are not due to a statistical fluke.
While that might seem impressive, it falls short of the stringent five-sigma level that high-energy physicists traditionally require for an official discovery. Five sigma means there's a less than one in a million probability that a finding is due to chance.

That all really sounds pretty uncertain.I'm not suggesting that we can't trust it. The point is they don't get a microscope that's really powerful and take a picture of the particle. They have not seen the particle itself. They smash atoms together and try to identify what comes out, the only way to do that is to judge by the effects it probably has upon larger particles. They can only do that by determining that what those particles are doing is indicative of it.

"The Higgs boson is the only one that remains undetected in experiments because it lives for only a tiny fraction of a second before decaying into other subatomic particles, such as photons, muons or leptons. The only way to measure it is to measure the products of its decay." (CBC News ibid)

It's the effect upon other practicals and its consistency with theory that tells them what's going on. I have said before that scinece doesn't prove (according to Popper) it only disproves or offers explainations. Those explaintions don't give us truth they give 'verisimilitude.' That's the appearance of truth through probability. That's what this is. No one is going to have a bunch of hoopla about verisimilitude. Can you see thee guys at CERN making a big deal out "We have verisimilitude!" Ho ray!

Another important aspect that this discovery holds for us in relation to real God concepts is this is another illustration of the concept of c0-detmerinate. I have previously illustrated the co-determinate through the relation between sub atomic particles and theory, by using the neutrino. In the same way neutrinos are not found directly but it is their effect upon other particles that indicate their presence. The co-determinate is like the relationship between the footprint in the snow and the foot that made it. The two always go together and one indicates the presence of the other. The relation between Higgs boson and other particles is another example of a co-determinate.

Of course the atheists all say "O but you are just assuming a relationship between experience and god you can't really prove it's there. The theroy of Higg's assumed a relatinoship before it could prove that boson was there. It's because the test meets the assumptions that we can assume it fulfills theoretical expectations and that is the predictive power of scinece. The thing applies in the co-determine in any issue. The theoretical relationship between divine and experience is there due to the place of the experince in the creation of religion. So then finding the experience and the effects it produces is just fulfillment theoretical expectations; meaning, scientific predictive power helps to demonstrate the rational warrant for belief.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Rick Perry Does it again

On Need More Shovels: the genius of the campaign trail rejects 90-10 ratio of federal backed matching funds that would have included 1.54 million Texans who are not covered by medicaid and can't afford health insurance.