Atheism, a new look at things.

I know how much you guys love wall of text as opposed to the posting of videos, however not only is this interesting stuff, with both sides equally represented, but it removes the grammar police from making dubious points.


The doc has been uploaded onto youtube in parts, which i've organized into a playlist that has been embedded here.

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

Looks interesting, I'll almost definitely see it.

My only skepticism about this sort of thing is that Hitchens is often paired up poorly with someone, so that it's equal in a technical sense, but not in a meaningful one. Granted, people of Hitchens' intellectual capacity are probably in short supply, but they always seem to pair him with someone who is operating on some fundamentally different level; some Priest or Cardinal or amateur theologian or something who is decent enough at making his own case, but often either does not (or cannot) spar back and forth with the specific accusations made against their faith. It's very frustrating.

It's also more than a little annoying that Hitchens always seems to confuse (willfully or not) Christianity's usefulness or effectiveness with its truth. He often speaks as if demonstrating its moral failings somehow carries over into its veracity, and the way the question of the film is phrased ("Is Christianity good for the world?") plays right into this.

Re: walls of text and videos. It's not that I like walls of text and dislike videos: I like specifics and don't usually like or trust arguments that can't engage specific things. Videos are usually blunt instruments; I prefer the scalpel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas...n_(theologian)

Looks good. Hitchens is probably the least starry-eyed out of all them, which is good for Atheism. But what Atheism really needs is another Nietzsche; not more Sagans or Shaws. That being said, religion really needs another Chesterton. Though, he would have probably crushed Nietzsche in debates out of sheer personality alone.

Still, in terms of the written page, I cannot think of a better pairing of equally-matched opponents (who were alive at the same time).

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

I used to listen to the Dennis Prager radio show, what a pompous ass he is, and he would debate Hutchens. Prager is a jerk.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

Alien life, "new wave thinking" (whatever that is), crystals, pyramids, people claiming to be witches or druids, back-to-nature environmentalists --these are all religious substitutes for those who have turned from the Bible to Sci-fi and folktales. Like most religions, they are seeking an all-powerful being who can explain and take care of things, regulate their world and be a person (or thing) they can call on for help in times of need. Is a crash of an alien spacecraft in Roswell, N.M., any less of a miracle than the Son of God being born in a manger in Bethlehem?

If we are "evolved to need to believe in something" why do we generally believe in the same things as our parents, our family, our peers? If there is an evolutionary need to believe in something--anything then why would a person born into a Christain family, a Christain neighborhood not have at least a good if not equal chance to grow up to have the Muslim or Jewish or Shinto faith as to be a Christian? Or if a person were born into a family who were all Catholic, shouldn't he have a 50-50 chance of becoming a Protestant if the only evolutionary need was to believe in something no matter what?

Although there are exceptions--more today in our more open, less religious society than in the past--kids of Christian parents are more likely to describe themselves as Christian; those born in Muslim families usually adopt a form of the Muslim faith. Jews become Jews, Catholics become Catholics, Protestants become Protestants. My point being that religion is learned, not an evolutionary need. I mean at what age do kids begin hearing and later repeating "Now I lay me down to sleep/ I pray the Lord my soul to keep ..." or singing "Jesus loves the little children ... Red or yellow, black or white/ They are precious in His sight." I'm sure there are similar things in the Muslim and Jewish or any other faiths that channel a child into a certain religion practically from birth.

How many times have you seen decorations of a religious nature in a newborn's nursery--maybe needlework saying, "Bless our little Angel." A baby is not going to be able to read that, of course, but it's symbolic of the total emersion into a religious concept that we're subject to from birth. In Christianity, the main subject of religion are referred to in family terms that a small child will immediately understand--"Our Father, who art in Heaven...," The Son of God," "Holy Mary, mother of God . . . "

Basically a newborn needs food and drink and shelter to live. He needs someone to clean and clothe him and tend him when he's sick or injured. And he needs human contact in order to develop physically, mentally, and socially. He learns to be a Democrat or Republican growing up around his parents and listening to their political beliefs. He learns to smoke if born into a family of smokers, but is less likely to smoke he he grows up among non-smokers. He learns to prefer initally his city and state over others from his peers. And he learns his religious identity early on from parents and family. I once read our whole personality is pretty much established by age 5, certainly before we enter school. So there are a great many things we learn from parents and family. And I think that includes a "need" for religion that is more highly developed in some than in others. Which explains the basic difference between the Pope and me.

Not really. One can trace the historic figures and writings and other connections documenting the evolution of belief in various gods and who worshiped which, whereas the very concept of "astronauts" is Johnny-come-lately supposition that people then try to force to fit ancient artifacts. I remember one thing in the "ancient astronauts" where some Aztec or Mayan carving was supposed to look like an astronaut lying in his reclining seat and possibly manipulating a control, but to get it to look that way involved turning the artifact some 90 degrees from the way it was set up originally; plus the supposed "astronaut" in that depiction was a figure that showed up in many other carvings and was supposed to be some Aztec chief or diety and the controls were common objects from that period. I remember also those giant drawings on a plateau in Peru (or whereever) were supposed to be "landing strips" for space ships that apprently landed like aircraft rather than our moon rockets, except that the true size of those "landing strips" when measured on the ground were hardly big enough for a bird to land on.

What the "ancient astronauts" and ET proponents have never explained is from where these out-of-space visitors came and how they managed to survive the hundreds of years it would take them to make the trip from another galaxy at the speed of light.

Moreover, archeologists have found in tombs colorful garments made of delicate feathers or hair that have survived for hundreds of years or more, yet never the material or metal from an astronaut's suit from the same period. They have found ancient pottery still intact but never an astronaut's helmet, ancient straw sandals but never moon boots. They have found sunken Viking boats they have raised and buttons and trash from Roman battlegrounds, but never one piece of an ancient spaceship.

And as someone else said before--even if you could find evidence of ancient astronauts, then you're stuck with the question of who made the astronauts?

Interesting point. They can't explain that because that knowledge isn't known. We can't do it, therefore it isn't believable. Unlike say..the Viriginal birth. Artificial Insemmination is standard today, would be considered fantastical fiction a hundered years ago much less in the days the bible and other texts of the day.

The Dogon Tribe a primitive people knew of star formations that "we" didn't discover until the hubble telescope could peer into the heavens. How is that possible? Were they just really good guessers?

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What the ancient astronaut theory does do, is make some of the writings in the bible seem at least plausible.

taken at face value, its ridiculous.

There are always going to be more questions than answers.

for instance :



I maintain that legends, myths and religion could be the same.

Frankly I don't know.

And neither do you.

This is why talking about metaphysics sucks.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Theoretically it is scientifically posible to travel faster than the speed of light. But there is another theory there used to be intelligent life on Mars and the ancient astronauts could have come from there.

the stargate theory is pretty cool.

can you imagine talking about the hardon collider with academics a couple of hundereds years ago?

what will it be like in a 1000 years?

Religion is accepted on faith, not proof. Legends and myths, if you chose to believe them, also involve a show of faith since there is no proof. Fortunately, we have free will, which gives us the choice to believe or not. When it comes to UFOs, I chose not to believe because no one yet has suggested how anything can travel faster than light or how "spacemen" could survive hundreds or thousands of years traveling at the speed of light. I also chose not to believe in werewolves, vampires, unicorns, bigfoot, and other such creatures. Don't believe in virgin birth or rising from the dead or the sun standing still while Josuah fit the battle of Jerico. Not believing in such things, I'm not seeking "proof" of any of these events,

However, most people nowdays chose not to worship Thor because they now know what causes lightning and thunder. Few believe in similar legends and myths for the same reasons and even fewer worship them, which is what separates legends and myths from any of the religions on earth.

Bottomline, if you truly believe something you don't need proof. If you don't believe something (like ancient astronauts), you still don't need proof especially when convinced there are logical explanations for those so-called "mysteries." The difference between your not knowing and my not knowing is that I also don't care, so it doesn't bother me a bit, which for all practical purposes is very similar to knowing such stories are all bull chit.

You didn't clap to show you believe in fairies when Tinkerbell was dying?

I haven't heard that theory of anything being faster than light--only that Einstein claimed there was nothing faster and no one has yet been able to track anything at a faster speed.

There probably was life on Mars--maybe still is--but nothing we would call intelligent then or now. The "ancient astronaut" theory I like best is that simple life-forms like mold and viruses existed in Martian rocks and soil that were shattered and cast out of the Martian atmosphere by the many meteor strikes on that planet, creating new meteors or comets carrying those same life-forms that eventually crashed into earth and jump-started life on this planet. That I could see as a possibility, but the probabilty is likely much simpler--it would have been as easy, perhaps easier, for those simple life-forms simply to have formed on earth rather than Mars.

Naw, I've been a cynic all my life. Besides when I first saw Disney's Peter Pan in one of its periodic rereleases, I was old enough--9 or 10--to be more interested in whether Hook's bomb blew off her little dress. "Dying, hell--is she nude??" Hm, she was one shapely little firefly.

I love how Disney completely flipped the moral play around from the original book, which warned against letting go of childhood too late. Peter pan, the Heartless he was called in that...

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You were more more advanced than me if you were thinking about Tinkerbell that way at nine or ten.

You could write a volume of books about the non-morality of Disney compared to their source material

Ah, I've been crazy for the ladies all my life!