Secular Café Archive

[quote=""Rie""]I think that the Eastern Philosophers are totally self centred... and in this day of knowledge of the vastness of the Universe, it just doesn't cover the sense of awe ... Hey! just taking a breath is magic.[/quote] But isn't the same true for anybody describing any...

[quote=""Michel""] I thought: No, it can't be! Then I started reading my wife's childhood Bible and ... it was all true! So many horrible stories in the Bible. How about Lot, loosing his wife as God turned her into a statue of salt. Then Lot's daughters felt sorry for him and the...

[quote=""Jobar""]Justme, have you ever actually read the whole Bible, cover to cover? There are good parts of it, certainly. I've always quite liked Ecclesiastes, for example. But most of it is just awful- poor writing, poor ethics, poor philosophy. Just try to plow through Levit...

[quote=""subsymbolic""] What makes you believe the people who wrote the bible knew God? It's a package deal. One can't believe that the God that is described in the Bible without the Bible, because he is introduced to you by that same Bible. I'm not going to say it works for ever...

[quote=""Michel""] Of course, we don't know what consciousness is. But, unless you believe in a divine creation, it must have come slowly as a step in evolution. right? For example, when I mow the lawn, first time, each spring, I cut the dandelions but, two weeks later, the have ...

[quote=""Michel""] I mean, the universe must be finite or infinite. If it is infinite, there isn't a smallest and biggest part: going into the microcosme and macrocosme for ever ... strange! In my humble opinion, only a finite yet unbound universe makes sense, doesn't it? [/quote...

[quote=""Michel""] Nietzsche predates the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Yes but ... what do you think about the idea that, if the universe is not created, it must be eternal and, therefore, what can happen, will happen? Of course, we ate talking about billions, or r...

[quote=""Michel""] But Nietzsche was an atheist and a materialist. So we know that he didn't believe in either heaven or the eternal return. I never read the book, DrZoidberg, but, from what I understand, Nietzsche thought that, if God doesn't exist, the universe was not created ...

[quote=""Michel""] I became interested in Nietzsche after reading about his Eternal Recurrence. It seems to make sense. What do you think? [/quote] I think it's a metaphor. In Thus So Zarathustra Nietzsche uses Zoroaster as a juxtaposition to western thought. Nietzsche gets lots ...

[quote=""Michel""] He he... well.. I'm not a humanist. To me humanism is the first wave of post Christian secularists. okay... thank you for the link, talking about both Nietzsche and Marx, two people I try to understand. But then, it was a friend who called me first, a humanist....

[quote=""Michel""] Well... That's nice. But you're still basically talking about mostly middle-class westerners. I hate to rain on your parade, but we don't matter that much. I see humanists as the people pointing as the ship goes down saying "I told you so. You should have ...

[quote=""Michel""] We've simply got statistics against us. I understand. But when the Titanic sank, in 1912, the Christians were looking at the sky, praying God to save them. The UFOlogists were also looking at the sky, trying to spot the flying saucer that would come and rescue ...

[quote=""Michel""] My hopes for humanity surviving to 3000 AD are not good. I mean.. Trump got elected president by members of this species. That's not any sign of intelligence. If the robots would take over, I doubt we'd be worse off. My dear DrZoidberg, do you remember the 1950...

[quote=""Michel""] When people like Elon Musk worries about AI taking over and killing us. ... and this is what really worries me, as a grand-father, after asking last year to 60 teenagers, what they think the world will be in the year 3000. The came with exactly that answer: &qu...

[quote=""justme""] What makes you believe the people who wrote the bible knew God? It's a package deal. One can't believe that the God that is described in the Bible without the Bible, because he is introduced to you by that same Bible. I'm not going to say it works for everyone,...

[quote=""Roo St. Gallus""] So, Doc... Do you teach early Christian history, or are you a classicist whose period overlaps with Christian development? Professional, or amateur? I am an amateur who got involved in the Quest studies in the mid-1990s. I think that Burton Mack's work ...

[quote=""Michel""] Ah, Artificial Intelligence! I love that discussion too! If I build a computer as complex as a human brain, let it pick up ideas on the internet, then ask it: "Are you conscious?" and it answers: "Yes, of course!" do I have a mean of proving...

[quote=""Roo St. Gallus""]So, Doc... Do you teach early Christian history, or are you a classicist whose period overlaps with Christian development? Professional, or amateur? I am an amateur who got involved in the Quest studies in the mid-1990s. I think that Burton Mack's work i...

[quote=""Koyaanisqatsi""] Early Christianity was very aggressive and belligerent. There's historical reasons for this. Yeah, they were an insurrectionist movement. Most likely a Zealots derivative; what we would call “freedom fighters” and the Romans would have called (in modern ...

[quote=""Hermit""] I mentioned it early in the thread, but the ultimate (IMO) debunking of ID came at the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial. You should read the transcripts. Take your time, they are quite lengthy, but also very entertaining. That's not true. I think it was 1871 that the ...

[quote=""Worldtraveller""]I mentioned it early in the thread, but the ultimate (IMO) debunking of ID came at the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial. You should read the transcripts. Take your time, they are quite lengthy, but also very entertaining.[/quote] That's not true. I think it was...

[quote=""Koyaanisqatsi""]It’s funny that they took such great care and yet every Christian apologist always falls back on the “they had to change the story to be more Roman friendly so as to avoid persecution” dodge whenever you point out that there was no way in hell Pilate woul...

[quote=""Hermit""]Conspiracy? Who mentioned conspiracy? I simply pointed out that the "regular people" were not merely not supposed to read the Bible - they were not meant to understand what was written in it either. At best they were meant to listen to and accept the i...

[quote=""Hermit""] The idea that the Bible was written for regular people to read is ridiculous. It was written to be read out aloud by experts and interpreted. Just like in any Christian mass. Most early Christians would never be able to even touch a Bible. Let alone read it. No...

[quote=""Koyaanisqatsi""]I know I’ve posted this before, but there is a difference between free will and free agency that almost always gets lost in any such discussions. Free will is a Catholic apologetic designed to spackle over the rather glaring logical hole in the dogma of a...