Creative is "the devil's advocate." (By his own admission.)

yep!

Oh-- are you saying "she" is a "he" I take back the sorry then!

I can understand that there is a group who are anti-religion where organized religion is concerned and is being used to manipulate the masses for the purpose of war.

But if they are using this 'problem' for an excuse for their agenda they are no better than those who use religion for the purpose of their agenda.

On the surface they all sound very 'reasonable.' But make no mistake they do have an agenda to manipulate the 'beliefs' of the masses.

You even saw where Creativesoul compared my assertion that there is indeed a 'designer' with the same sort of thing that motivates "suicide bombers,"(which as far as I am concerned has not been proven anyway.) His remark is a perfect example of the agenda at work in that video.

Suicide bombers are desperate people who see no hope for their life or their cause. They are at war, and they are on the losing side. How many suicide bombers do you see on the winning side? Have you ever heard of a Jewish soldier going into Baghdad as a suicide bomber? Of course not. It is because they don't feel they have to. They have weapons and bombs and long range rifles.

If people want to sit around with blinders on and declare that there is no 'designer' in the midst of the greatest design ever, then they are blind fools in my opinion.

I see design and designers everywhere.

The bower bird spends all day collecting blue things to arrange around his bower in just the right place, in order to attract a mate. That is a designer. We are all designers contributing to the great design of this reality.

Absolutely.

Moreover, the argument, "Religion can be abused, therefore we should all become atheists" is pretty damn lame indeed.

Well to summarize what they are saying is:

"Religion is man made (God does not exist) and dangerous, hence if we educate people (to what we believe is the truth) they will change their beliefs."

(Which everybody knows is an unrealistic expectation.)

They can educate people with the bloody history of religious wars till the cows come home, and I will agree with them. They can present scientific evidence that we have genes that allow for us to become violent and I will agree with that too.

BUT they have not sold me on the idea that a suicide bomber did it because of their religious beliefs. Their beliefs may have contributed to their actions, but their actions are actions of war and of desperate people with very little resources to fight back some other way.

Personally, I am not involved with any organized religion. I am my own final authority. There is no authority that has the power to manipulate me. And yet, I believe in the spiritual side of our existence and in a conscious intelligent "designer" or creative force manifesting in the universe.

Now see if you can convince me to be a suicide bomber. Aint' gonna happen.

Excuse the interruption while I bookmark this for later reading.

I might agree About (religion) if you mass all the large neo-so-cald "Christians in the group. Even GOD's word says few shall enter in!! Who are the few---not the big billion member mega churches??? They write there own idea's and thro- them out for the masses to ad-here to--but there not Biblical. Might not make sense, but i'm only on coffee number 2!!

I've researched the biblical mythology in-depth. It's my conclusion that the bozo refered to as 'God' in that mythology doesn't have the wisdom of a 2-year-old child. Much less enough intelligence to have created this universe.

Of course, I realize that this is actually a reflection of the mortal bozos who actually wrote the book, and there is no such God as the Bible claims, anymore than Zeus is God.

There are countless reasons why the Biblical myth isn't intelligent enough to be from any divine source. There is also a myriad of reasons to believe that it was written by male-chauvinist men who were using the idea of a jealous tempermental godhead to control the masses and to give them an excuse for murdering their enemies as 'heathens' and enemies of God.

So, just so you know, whilst I support the idea that this universe was designed by some sort of intelligence, that support does not spill over into the male-chauvinistic mythologies that use their manmade gods as an excuse to belittle women and condemn anyone as a 'heathen' who doesn't buy into their stupid book .

Those are precisely the kinds of mythologies that do indeed lead to such idiotic stupidity as religious "crusades", toturing and burning innocent midwives as "witches", and also lead to the bombing of abortion clinics, or suicide bombers as is the topic of this thread.

So yes, I am against those kinds of utterly ignorant and stupid doctrines that claim to be the voice of jealous egotistical godheads. Those mythologies are clearly false. No divine being could possibly be as stupid as those doctrines demand.

We know mortal humans who would be far more intelligent than God if those doctrines were true. So those mythologies our basically out of the running in terms of having any possibility of holding any truth.

Besides, how stupid would a creator have to be if 'he' designed a universe where the vast majority of souls he creates LOSE?

Yet, as you've pointed out, this is precisely what those doctines demand.

You say:



That would be a loser God. That would be a God who loses the vast majority of souls that it creates. This would also imply that Satan is the winner by far!

That would be an extremely inept creator.

So by your very own admission the biblical God is a loser God. He loses the vast majorty of souls that he creates. That the only way it could be true that only FEW enter into his kingdom.

If FEW enter in, then MOST must necessarily LOSE.

Thus by its own admission this is the doctrine of a very inefficent "loser God".

Hardly the sign of an all-wise creator.

If, by "God's word" you are referring to "The Bible" sorry, I don't t believe that God wrote a book.

I can see how one could arrive at that conclusion based on my use of the word “desire”. So maybe “urge” or “impulse” would be more accurate. As I said earlier, there was no intended differentiation between “conscious” and “unconscious” survival goals.

For example, the “fight or flight” response has its roots in the urge to survive. Whether the final determination (either “fight” or “flight”) is made at the genetic level or at the analytical level, or somewhere in between, it is always based on some determination, at some level, as to which one will provide the highest survival potential. The ultimate purpose is always optimum survival.

And don’t forget that “optimum” is a comparative, not an absolute. Optimum survival is always, by definition, relative to the circumstances.

Now of course, the problem is that not all attempts always result in optimum survival. This is all too obvious. And that is the basis of how I define “aberrant”. The root of the word “aberrant” is “deviate from…”, thus an aberrant survival goal is one which deviates from optimum survival, And an “aberrant thought process” is one that results in a determination the deviates from optimum survival. And aberrant “urge/impulse/desire/purpose” is one that leads/compels toward non-optimum survival.

So with all that in mind, I personally cannot think of any “examples which deny the conclusion”. (The conclusion being “…anything anyone does is fundamentally an attempt at increasing survival potential of self or group”.)

That, of course, depends on what one chooses to accept as evidence. Some choose to accept the simple fact of "order in the universe" as evidence of "design". Some choose to accept the obvious fact that they are able to be, do and/or have, by their own "design", as evidence.

Now before this goes off into an unwanted tangent, let me just say that the word "group" was used to simplify the conversation up to this point, since it was all oriented around the individual (suicide bomber) and group (religion). What should really be used there is “anything with which one has a symbiotic relationship – directly, indirectly, real or perceived”. Now there’s no word I know of that says all that, but I think the simple “symbiont” vomes closest. So if we’re going into a “hard logic” discussion here, then you may substitute the word “symbiont(s)” for the word “group(s)”.

To the fundies...

For the very same reason that the Intelligent Design argument fails to prove the existence of the 'God' of Abraham, it fails to prove your 'God' as well.

There is no evidence of a designer.


Sky,

I will respond to you later...

Sky how does a atheist suicide fit into your statement below?



What or who is making this attempt?

(Moved to "Evidence of Designer thread)

Creative,
I saw that new thread and was on my way back here to move my post when I saw you post/reply.

Move complete.

Sky,

Could you copy and move your response on evidence of a designer to the thread which I began on that?

Nevertheless, are you aware of the fact that most of the suicide bombers are young kids -- teenagers who are easily impressed by the spiritual leaders for glorious deeds?..

There's never been an elderly suicide bomber, only kids under 20.
If a religious doctrine is the only education such kids have ever been exposed to, they will gladly sacrifice their miserable lives for the ultimate survival of that same religious doctrine which -- I suspect -- the spiritual leaders are warning them is under the threat from the "enemies"! And there's nothing more sacred than sacrifycing one's life for preserving "the mirraculous word of God"!

The only way to fight the dogma is with another (though much more liberal) dogma -- MONEY (and Information)!!!
Even such a strong ideology as the Socializm could not withstand the opposition to Information (and Money) -- though it managed to keep people misinformed for over 75 years!

According to the evidence presented by Dr Andy, the majority of the suicide bombers were college graduates, which would indicate that the majority of them were over 20.

But other than that, you're right.

I wouldn't put much confidence in whatever Dr.Andy is saying!!!

The report I've seen on TV has shown some school kids, or some older ones -- from the poor families...