Atheism in the USVI

I don't read the same thing. equal value? yes we all live and have a purpose. my purpose is to live the best I can, help others etc. a plants purpose is to grow and provide food, shelter and O2 to higher species, no brain, no soul, no pain and self regenerating.

Your interpretation differs from what the manifesto states. Under your interpretation, man decides the value and purpose of everything, which is not the same as affording every living thing equal status.

You are right dnw8up. Although you may be thinking in a purely literal mode, I use the "manifesto" as a guide not as a bible. I have my own perception, intelligence and experience which leads me a less literal interpretation. I use SH as a label ,as you may label yourself as a christian or whatever. It is the label that most closely defines my general beliefs for the present,

In your religious/ spiritual experience did you find that the doctrine associated with your faith to completely and accurately define your beliefs?

I studied Zen for a while and was into it and ready to call it my own until I read the TAO of Zen by Alan Watts. He described the journey of zen as rolling a huge rock up a hill. You constantly had to push or hold the rock or it would roll back down. I realized that I could push the rock OK but the constant effort of holding the rock removed me from my everyday experience, the rock won.

I don't read the same thing. equal value? yes we all live and have a purpose. my purpose is to live the best I can, help others etc. a plants purpose is to grow and provide food, shelter and O2 to higher species, no brain, no soul, no pain and self regenerating.

Actually there are studies indicating plants communicate and feel pain as from an insect attack for example.

Thanks for the clarification, Bombi. You posted the manifesto without any additional commentary, so I was unaware that you did not subscribe to it literally.

"In your religious/ spiritual experience did you find that the doctrine associated with your faith to completely and accurately define your beliefs?"

I have no religious or spiritual beliefs or faith. I am a rationalist, and therefore an atheist.

I'm with you dntw8up. I have no imaginary friends. No spirituality, only reality.

An athiest walks into a bar..................

I don't read the same thing. equal value? yes we all live and have a purpose. my purpose is to live the best I can, help others etc. a plants purpose is to grow and provide food, shelter and O2 to higher species, no brain, no soul, no pain and self regenerating.

Actually there are studies indicating plants communicate and feel pain as from an insect attack for example.

Well, my plants are EXTREMELY pissed at me then, they're outside yelling at me in spanish to water them!!! hehe

This thread makes me think of my great grandmother for some reason. She was Cherokee. I don't know if she was born free but she was raised on a reservation. Her birth certificate only had two options identifying her race. It was either black or white. Black was the one checked. Though she was not black. She passed on when I was young and she was almost 100 years old. She spoke halting english and I did not understand her other language. I spent a summer with her when I was 5 or 6. She was not a christian but she was most spiritual in my young mind. Every morning she took me down to the water to bathe. It was so alien to be stripped naked outside. She as well as me. It was so cold in my mind. She chanted songs to the sun, wind, earth and other things I don't remember. She carried baskets and "tickled" fish that she caught with her bare hands for breakfast. She gathered all kinds of things in the early morning. She made me toys from bark of trees. She washed clothes at the river, beating them against rocks, all the while singing, talking or chanting in a language I never understood. She made most everything she used for daily life. Nothing wasted. She made marks on my face with dyes she made from plants. I don't know what they were or what they meant. I was glad when my mother came to get me but sad at the same time. I remember her teaching me to cook things which was so weird to me at the time. I just wanted to play with my baby dolls. My most vivid memory is her shock of white hair down to her knees. Mostly done up in a knot but let loose when she bathed.

Tami. We only know what we are taught and your GGM did her job and taught you something that she felt important by example and apparently it was effective and positive. All I want is to understand the (my) world as best I can and do the right thing whenever possible and teach my 2 boys and grandkids by example Like your GGm I won't impose my beliefs and values but lead and influence by example. I had a next door neighbor who was a farmer that I worked for when I was a kid that taught me more than I ever learned in school, but I never realized it at the time and only after he was gone did Iappreciate his wisdom.

We all create our own realityand they are all different. I belive in what gives me solice and strenghth and have no illusions that anyone eslse will understand, I know it would be so much easier to be a good catholic, protestant or whatever. I'm just trying to make sense of it all and feel and do good. I guess I don't make a good atheist according to the prevailing criteria.

Further problems with the Spiritual Manifesto
1. If everything is "self-existing" then nothing was "created," equal or otherwise
2. Define "love"
3. From the FIFTH statement: nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes questionable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. How can anything have "value" at all?
4.Number 10: Everybody has a right to their own phylosophies and beliefs. A person's beliefs, or lack of, are equally as important to them as yours are to you. Of course they do! What is important is to understand that to say that all "beliefs" are equally important to them does in no way equate with what is "True"

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25

chupsing.

Hey, Antiqueone,

Don't forget about my questons.

Joe

Your interpretation differs from what the manifesto states. Under your interpretation, man decides the value and purpose of everything, which is not the same as affording every living thing equal status.

...so you're saying that it's ok that we give Ancestoral Native Virgin Islanders special rights. 😉

:S I know jokes aren't as funny when they have to be explained, but maybe you can help me out because I don't get it.

Ahh, the power of prayer.

http://www.poligazette.com/2009/06/10/wiley-drake-embarrasses-christians-again/

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

No, it is man who has made foolish the wisdom of god. For centuries human's relied on praying to god instead of themselves. They prayed for a good harvest. But that good harvest didn't always come and famine was suffered. They prayed for health, but health often eluded them. So instead of relying on the wisdom of this so called god they decided to take matters into their own hands. They discovered how to feed themselves, cure many of their ailments, live longer than imagined, grow taller and stronger than imagined. They did this because they turned away from the mystical school of thought and towards a school of thought based on reason. They questioned things that were taught to them as being holy, often being persecuted and murdered for their heretic thought. But these enlightened men were right...god is not the answer, REASON is.

It seems to me that if you look at the world the areas with the most poverty have the most religion. The question is, what is the cause and what is the effect? Does poverty make people want to pray, or is the mindset of those who rely on prayer what leads to poverty? I think there is sufficient evidence that religious mindset is the cause of the poverty. A mindset that perpetrates mystical belief as an acceptable means of guiding one's life is a mindset that will inevitably lead to what it always has led to, poverty, famine, short life spans and a world not very hospitable to human acheivement. It wasn't until the enlightenment when great men and women largely broke free from the shackles of religious thought that famine ended, lifespans increased and human life got easier for them. In the US we cling to the vestiges of religion out of some bizarre fear and superstition despite the overwhelming evidence that it is man, not prayer that has made this world a better place for human beings.

Sean

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. – George Bernard Shaw

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. - Isaac Asimov

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish. – Anonymous

When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life. – Sigmund Freud

They felt that science would be corrosive to religious belief and they were worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive to religious belief and it’s a good thing. – Steven Weinberg

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have. – Penn Jillette

The inspiration of the bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it. – Robert G. Ingersoll

Is it more logical to be a Christian? Is religion the natural choice of a smart person familiar with more of the evidence? Not according to a broad consensus of studies on IQ and religiosity. These studies have consistently found that the lower the IQ score, the more likely a person is to be religious.

jogetz: in response to your questions: the Truth of Christian belief is not based exclusively on subjective criteria. Jesus did claim that no man comes to the father but by him. He also said no man takes my life; I lay it down and I will take it back up again. Jesus died on the cross. Medical examiners from Harvard evaluated his scourging and crucifixion and were amazed he lived as long as he did. Jesus came back to life and was witnessed by over 500 people (who were intimately aware of death in a way we moderns almost never are. They were not fooled. No other religion claims that their leader came back to life and walked among us.

second: how to know where to take that "leap of faith" Look at the followers of other religions. Muslims think it is ok to kill non-believers. Notice that you only rarely find moderate believers that disagree with that. When the radicals go out and blow themselves up, the moderates are cheering. They are not condemning the radicals. When someone in the name of Christ kills (an abortionist) they are quick to condemn that action as non-Christian. When a Tsunami destroys coastlines all around south east Asia, Buddhists from afar figure it's just Karma. Christians send hundreds of workers to help with food, medicine, and cleaning up. There is a vast body of information that supports a reasonable faith in Christianity if you look. And anyhow: if one religion claims to be the one and only way, why not try it out first? See if the Truth is there!

About faith: faith is simply belief in something not seen. We have faith that when we flip the switch the light will go on. We can't see electricity, but we can see its effects. We had faith that atoms, neutrons, protons existed long before we actually saw anything that small. We have faith in the Bible because almost every single documentable archeological or historical event mentioned has been found despite the fact that mainstream (non-Christian) historians and archeologists did not believe the "myths" in the Bible.

Book to read: Reasons to Believe by R C Sproul

-Jesus came back to life and was witnessed by over 500 people
-Muslims think it is ok to kill non-believers.
-if one religion claims to be the one and only way, why not try it out first? See if the Truth is there!
-About faith: faith is simply belief in something not seen. We have faith that when we flip the switch the light will go on. We can't see electricity, but we can see its effects.
-Christians send hundreds of workers to help with food, medicine, and cleaning up
-We have faith in the Bible because almost every single documentable archeological or historical event mentioned has been found despite the fact that mainstream (non-Christian) historians and archeologists did not believe the "myths" in the Bible.

500 people!!! Well that does it, he must have come back to life then... How many people have Christians killed over the last 2000 years? Over this history of mankind, how many have killed in the name of god? Thou shall not kill....Its the only commandment that is flexable depending on who is dying and who is killing. We have faith that the electricity will go on because we used it yesterday....however it might not go on becasue of wapa...nothign divine about this. I think that many different people of all religions banded together to help the victims after a tsunami, CHristians dont get all the credit sorry. In fact im willing to bet that people who dont believe in god at all helped other people after the tsunami. As for the bible...The bible was written by men, many men... over hundreds and hundreds of years, what does the significance of documenting historical events have to do with it?

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei

This is to my mind is becoming rather humorous.
Atheists and Believers throwing quotations back and forth.
It's beginning to sound like Atheism IS a religion which is an oxymoron of high order:D

We had faith that atoms, neutrons, protons existed long before we actually saw anything that small.

Are you suggesting that "faith" is merely a theory waiting to be proven? We WERE NOT willing to sit idly by on our "faith" that atoms, neutrons, and proton's existed, we set to prove the theory of their existence. But religion doesn't seek to prove the existence of god, it simply tells you to "have faith" in what you are told through the Bible/Quran etc.

To date no one has proven to me that god exists and I honestly don't see anyone REALLY trying. Instead all I hear is "you have to have faith." That is the part of the religious philosophy I can't accept!

This is to my mind is becoming rather humorous.
Atheists and Believers throwing quotations back and forth.
It's beginning to sound like Atheism IS a religion which is an oxymoron of high order:D

If you view religion as I do as a philosophy, and Atheism as another philosophy then it kind of makes sense though. This is a philosophical discussion not a religious one. And I hope others are enjoying it....even if no one changes their minds its good to see the other side's arguments to better rationalize your thoughts!

Sean

We have faith in the Bible because almost every single documentable archaeological or historical event mentioned has been found despite the fact that mainstream (non-Christian) historians and archaeologists did not believe the "myths" in the Bible.

Book to read: Reasons to Believe by R C Sproul

I need a laugh today. antiqueone please tell me about these document able events. Why have there been no "miracles" in modern times? Are you waiting to be raptured?

Also check out what atheists are doing to make the public aware that there are other choices besides superstition.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/ads-for-atheism-appear-on-manhattan-buses/?emc=eta1

A little humor.

http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/comedy/2008/08/19/rsu_saddleback/index.html?source=video&aim=/ent/video_dog/comedy

rotorhead: Just a couple of sites to look at. I suppose you want huge miracles like parting of seas or burning bushes, but I suspect even that would not be enough for you. Here is one example of modern day miracles: http://www.aglimpseofeternity.org/
You could also watch the movie: Faith Like Potatos.

More sites to look at: http://biblicalstudies.info/top10/schoville.htm

http://www.faithfacts.org/search-for-truth/maps/archaeological-and-external-evidence

ree:miracles
http://www.faithfacts.org/search-for-truth/questions-of-christians/how-do-you-square-jesus-miracles-with-reality