Atheism in the USVI

Those horny catholic priests are at it again, this time in Italy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/14/italy-grapples-with-pries_n_285428.html

Talk about the dumbing down of America!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html

America's double standard.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574391183769432284.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

To all Atheists:

God is going to punish you.

I'm not worrying about being punished by god. It's the wacky believers that give me a little cause for pause. Think 9/11.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999
US physicist (1933 - )

I'm not worrying about being punished by god. It's the wacky believers that give me a little cause for pause. Think 9/11.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999
US physicist (1933 - )

If you still think that 9/11 was engineered by a bunch of Muslims living in caves in Afghanistan you are more wacky than any believer. Yeah, think of all of the 9/11's that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan have had to endure these past years because of the lies told by the Bush administration. Who weeps for those victims? Or maybe you believe that only American suffering counts.

Afghanistan has a 9/11 every day, and no Afghan was flying an airplane into buildings on 9/11. And please do not tell the "harboring Osama bin Laden" lie. The Taliban offered to turn Osama over to the authorities if the US could provide proof that he was involved in 9/11.

9/11 was planned in Hamburg, Germany. Most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Mohammed Atta's passport miraculously survived the inferno and was "found" in the street. Molten metal existed in the ruins of the towers for almost a month after their demolition...I listened to the news every day and heard with my own ears reporters talking about molten metal still being found weeks later. Building 7 was not hit by any airplane but collapsed neatly into its own footprint at around 5:45 on 9/11. Most people think only two buildings fell, Building 7 is never mentioned but there are tons of videos of its collapse on the Internet. No steel buildings have ever collapsed due to fire, except on 9/11 when three over-engineered steel building miraculously collapsed into their own footprints. Those who seek the truth about 9/11 are ridiculed and called "conspiracy theorists" by people who cannot produce a single indestructible black box from any plane that hit the towers but can produce an undamaged passport...the same people who will not release the traffic camera videos that would show what hit the Pentagon...the same people who, within days, identified all of the people who were on what hit the Pentagon by using DNA analysis...the same people who promptly shipped off all of the WTC debris to China.

The truth does NOT fear investigation.

Most of the evil being perpetrated in the world today is by those who call themselves peacemakers.

I am NOT an atheist. I believe in God, a higher power, the Master Planner, whatever we choose to call that force. Read an anatomy text sometime...we, and the rest of the animals and plants that occupy this little blue ball in the vast, unknown universe, are absolutely wondrous creations, not accidents. I do not claim to know how we came to be, but I certainly do not think we are here by accident. There is much that we as a species do not know, and to reject all things spiritual is, I think, counterproductive.

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root" ...Henry David Thoreau

Now that is a subject that I would love to see openly discussed!!!!

I'm not worrying about being punished by god. It's the wacky believers that give me a little cause for pause. Think 9/11.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999
US physicist (1933 - )

...and furthermore, before you go calling people names like "wacky believers" and sounding like the typical hubris-filled American, read some Middle East history and pay particular attention to the interventionist American policies that have created so much resentment.
Listen to George Washington:
"It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world."
Listen to Thomas Jefferson:
" "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none."

It's hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify interventionist policies today. The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change. If anything, today's more complex world cries out for the moral clarity provided by a noninterventionist foreign policy.

When we get involved in negative ways and create resentment, it does not help to simply label the offended parties as "wacky believers".

Deal.

Now that is a subject that I would love to see openly discussed!!!!

You would have to kill too many sacred cows. There will never be an honest discussion about that particular topic.

Sadly, I think you are right about that, Native Son. So much as a question in that area will turn ugly very quickly as we may soon see.

More cut and paste!

After a public lecture in 2005, I was buttonholed by a documentary filmmaker with Michael Moore-ish ambitions of exposing the conspiracy behind 9/11. “You mean the conspiracy by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to attack the United States?” I asked rhetorically, knowing what was to come.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-people-believe-in-conspiracies&sc=WR_20090915

Yet more cut and paste.

Religious row as Orthodox Jewish couple sue neighbours for 'imprisoning' them with automatic hallway light
Dr Dena Coleman and husband Gordon claim they cannot leave their holiday flat on the Sabbath because when they do they automatically trigger the light in the communal hallway - contravening a religious ban on turning on electrical items from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday because it constitutes 'creating fire'.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1193357/Jewish-couple-sue-neighbours-imprisoning-automatic-hallway-light.html#ixzz0RIikIZR0

Muslims Press for School Holidays in New York City
NEW YORK -- Muslims groups here are pressing city officials to close public schools on two of the faith's holiest days, just as schools do for major Jewish and Christian holidays. But the groups have yet to persuade the man in charge of New York City schools, Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125297372149610431.html?mod=rss_US_News

How Atheists View Religion
The struggle between religion and reason for the hearts and minds of the people goes back at least as far as ancient Greece and has been played out time and again through the ages.

Throughout the 21st century, modern civilization will confront a wide range of intellectual, moral, and social challenges. One of the most difficult issues to settle will be the proper role of religion in the public sphere.

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/3405/

Religion in America in Decline
Religion in America is on the decline and has been dropping since the turn of the century. That's not an atheist's happy dream. It's the conclusion of researchers at Faith Communities Today (FACT), the multi-year study of American religion quarterbacked by the Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/09/11/religion-in-america-in-decline/

And she's pretty cute to boot 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmHN3JtyUXg

I disagree with her first point about where rights come from. Other's acknowledge our rights but we are endowed with them "by our creator" so others don't give us our rights.

Sean

I love it! Definitely worth watching.

And I agree with her, even about where rights come from. Rights differ depending on where you are born and how repressive your government happens to be. If you are an enemy combatant in Guantanamo you don't have the same rights as a U.S. citizen in the states. Maybe you should, but that's wishful thinking. Reality is that rights are given by other humans not god.

She is cute, and I like her accent.

Sean,
I liked your video so much I went looking for others by the same cute girl. I found this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt5J3EEjASs&feature=related

More of her videos here. She is very funny, I like her.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ZOMGitsCriss

LOL, I think I'm in love 🙂

As for the rights thing, I think the point is that we are born with our rights and its government that takes them away, not the other way around. I realize that without acknowledgement by others they are useless, but that doesn't mean they still aren't ours, and their removal makes the person who took them evil, not the person who acknowledges them honorable. While this seems semantical, philosophically there is a significant difference. When we frame it as "you are born with your rights" it means that to negate those rights is to violently take them away from me. Taking something from someone we generally view as wrong in our country versus giving something to someone which is considered noble. I believe that is why our founding fathers and others during the enlightenment framed "natural" rights the way they did, as something that we are endowed with by our creator as opposed to something that we are given, charitably, by our fellow man. I don't believe that the "endowed by their creator" verbiage has anything to do with religion, it was simply a way to show that humans are born with their rights and if they lose them its because other have chosen to violently take them away.

Sean

More cut and paste!

After a public lecture in 2005, I was buttonholed by a documentary filmmaker with Michael Moore-ish ambitions of exposing the conspiracy behind 9/11. “You mean the conspiracy by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to attack the United States?” I asked rhetorically, knowing what was to come.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-people-believe-in-conspiracies&sc=WR_20090915

Everybody always trots out the "conspiracy theory" angle, when all that is required is an honest answer to a few simple questions like:

....why did Building 7 collapse into it own footprint when it was not struck by an airplane and had no large fires?
....why was molten steel found in the WTC debris weeks after the collapse of the buildings?
....why was Mohammed Atta's passport found after the total demolition of the airplane he was flying?
....why did Mohammed Atta need a passport for a domestic flight?
....why did the tower that had the least damage collapse first?
....why did the initial news reports say that a truck bomb had struck the Pentagon?
....why did the collapse of the WTC create a pyroclastic flow?

....and many more such questions.

Nobody has attempted to answer even one of those honestly, and you pull out some Scientific American article like it was the last word.

You cannot convince me, or a growing number of skeptics (including metallurgical engineers, architects, airline pilots, and other certifiable crazies) that three steel buildings just happened to fall, all on the same day, after burning for less than an hour.

....and PUHLEEEZE don't tell me about "jet fuel"...ask anybody at HOVENSA....jet fuel is KEROSENE. It cannot melt structutal steel any more than it can melt your stove.

But we all know that the laws of physics were miraculously suspended on 9/11, thereby allowing a plane to hit a building and burn off all of its jet fuel in a tremendous explosion OUTSIDE the building, which is clearly visible on numerous 9/11 videos. The jet fuel then miraculously regenerates itself and proceeds to consume all of the structural steel in the building, resulting in its collapse.

She reminds me of hotforwords.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKlPou_7e5A

LOL, I think I am in love too. Or maybe just lust and respect.

I think of rights as theoretical and actual rights. While you might say that we are born with "natural" or "human" rights, I am not sure that we would agree what those rights are. Are you born free to do anything that you wish? Or anything that you wish as long as it doesn't impact the rights of others? I don't think there is a definition of universal natural rights and I think that what is considered a universal human right has varied over time.

We would all probably agree that you have the right to live and to be free. This obviously has changed over time since slavery was once accepted through out the world. The right to live free must not have been a universally accepted right back then. Have you ever tried to ennumerate what you consider basic natural rights. There are problems and choices must be made.

If for instance you have a right to live and to be free does that mean that someone else is required to provide you with the means to live? We would probably agree that stealing is wrong, however if it is done in the name of a government it is not considered stealing. Same with murder, we would all probably agree that murder is not a human right, however if done at the direction of your government it is not considered murder. If you commit a crime (as defined by humans) is it immoral for the government to incarcerate you and take away your freedom?

So you may talk about theoretical natural rights, but they do not exist until they are ennumerated and bestowed upon you by other human beings.

John

Native Son,

I think that you would be surprised to find that we share many of the same opinions about our government. I think that the current US government is completely hypocritical. It amazes me that using an attack on NY/DC etc which resulted in the deaths of 3500 Americans they have somehow justified the deaths of 100's of thousands of Afghan civilians. It amazes me that we continue to support Saudi Arabia and Egypt when all of the 9/11 conspirators were either Saudi or Egyptian. We use the excuse that we are rescuing the Afghan people from the Taliban. What about the Saudi and Egyptian people. Both countries are run by dictators and suppress their own populations, yet they are our good friends. I can see very clearly how other countries could hate us, we say one thing but do another.

We are the only country which uses intimidation on a global scale to affect the political processes in other countries. If we don't like what another country is doing we park an aircraft carrier off their coastline and threaten to place an embargo on their trade. Yes, the US is a great and mighty country which has lost its way.

Have you ever tried to find out how many Afghan civilians have died during the war on terror? It is easy to find out the number of coalition casualties but almost impossible to find out how many Afghans have died. Are coalition lives more valuable than Afghan lives? Are we killing Afghans because we are afraid they are going to come back to the US and attack us again? Oh wait, the attackers were Saudis and Egyptians.

I am a Libertarian. I have never felt represented by either the Republican or Democratic parties. I think that the government is the cause of most of our social problems, not the solution. Just as I feel that religion is the cause of many of our problems not the solution. When you mix the two you have a formula for disaster. I cannot remember ever voting for a president that I felt good about, it has always been the lesser of two evils.

John

Hey, John~ pro abortion people do not agree that you have a right to life. Most of the Arab states do not consider that a woman has a right to live freely. Slavery still exists in Africa, India (with child forced labor) and elsewhere. Obama wants us all to be wards of the state it seems. So, either the only natural right we have is the right to die ORrrr we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights......

This is one of my favorites. She is so cute. And intelligent. Or maybe a well written script. No she must be intelligent after all she is an atheist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2Qi0Mk2lRs

Americans who don't identify with any religion are now 15% of the USA, but trends in a new study shows they could one day surpass the nation's largest denominations — including Catholics, now 24% of the nation.
American Nones: Profile of the No Religion Population, to be released today by Trinity College, finds this faith-free group already includes nearly 19% of U.S. men and 12% of women. Of these, 35% say they were Catholic at age 12.

"Will a day come when the Nones are on top? We can't predict for sure," says lead researcher Barry Kosmin.

But if Nones, now 22% of all adults ages 18 to 29, continue to gain among young adults, to draw more people "switching out" from denominations and to replace more religious older people, researchers forecast one in five Americans will be Nones in 20 years.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-09-22-no-religion_N.htm

people who don't believe in God remind me of the emperor strutting around in his "new clothes".....but that's just me

As the article states, being a "None" does not preclude a belief in god. I've been a None for most of my adult life but I'm not an atheist.

Hey, John~ pro abortion people do not agree that you have a right to life. Most of the Arab states do not consider that a woman has a right to live freely. Slavery still exists in Africa, India (with child forced labor) and elsewhere. Obama wants us all to be wards of the state it seems. So, either the only natural right we have is the right to die ORrrr we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights......

You should pay a visit to "most of the Arab states" and actually talk to the women, instead of listening to propaganda designed to make you demonize and hate other people for political purposes

Iraq, for example, has the highest average number of family members living in the same house, based on recent surveys. Why is that? Simply because Muslims consider it a great blessing to take care of their elderly. You can even see a passing nod to this fact in the movie "The Kingdom", where there is a scene of the Arab police officer at home, praying with his family...including his father, who is confined to a wheelchair. He then proceeds to assist his father in preparing for bed. These are the kinds of family values that you want to see destroyed.

In Islam, a woman is not supposed to show her beauty to any man but her husband. She is not to leave the house unless accompanied by a male member of the family. This has its roots in simply being concerned about the safety of the woman. How many rapes and murders do you think would be prevented every year if this rule were followed here? There are thousands of women in the West who are enslaved by drugs and pornography. Is this the change you want to see happen in the Muslim world?

There is a vast propaganda effort afoot to demonize the people on this planet who choose to live modest lives in a religious environment. They must be secularized in order to open up their populations to exploitation by Western business interests.

The fact is, the Arab family unit is much stronger and more cohesive than its Western counterpart. They have their customs, their way of life, and it works for them. You do not have any alternatives which are more viable, so you should leave them alone. Next time you see an Arabic woman weaing a hijab or a burka, stop her and ask her why she wears it. You may be surprised at her answer. A lot of them consider it a great freedom...freedom from the stares of men, for example. All they see is a shapeless blob.

gee don't arab men have the right to kill their wives and daughters for what the men percieve as misbehavior, we see this on the news at least once a week,nice religion