Atheist billboards

[fscrig75]

There is no central Atheist headquarters where we send money and receive directions. We are not a cohesive group, nor an alternate religion. What some guys in Texas decide to do with their money is their business. I personally wouldn't waste the money on it- we won't even put a billboard up for the business.

The few that I know, me included, wouldn't waste the money on the billboard either. It’s those few out there that want all the media attention that give us a bad name.

Anybody remember the soldier that was suing the Army because he said, other soldiers would harassed him for not participating in group prayers before they would roll out on missions in Iraq?
For all my years in service I have never had anyone say anything to me or criticize me for my beliefs. If my PLT wants to pray before a mission, let them. Keep your mouth shut and let the believers do their thing.

All that billboard is, is a big look at me sign.

 

[TunaSoda]

That statement is just designed to pick a fight... Just as earlier you got miffed when all Atheists were lumped in with Darwinists, the result is the same here. Same christians believe that no doubt. Hell, I dated a girl whose church was so backwards and outdated she still thought that women had one less Rib then men. Your statement also lumps the creation of every species on earth into one action, which is where most Christians start to disagree.


Why would he not use that way? I have never seen much of a conflict between the two. Evolution does occur, there is no doubt of that. The question is how far does it go? Did it start with a primitive man and move, or are your ancestors amoebas?


are we all just the offspring of a retarded frog-squirrel?

I got miffed?

 

[o2bgpn]

This is as truthful as it gets on a personal level. IMO most people are trained from a very young age to think in certain ways, kind of an OS. Which can be good, as it helps people to communicate effectively. It can also shut down many of the alternate paths (possibilities, latent talents, senses and sensitivities) that an un indoctrinated person may have been born with and that have developed more naturally.
To put it bluntly, I care about my fellow human beings (in most cases) and always have the fear, when (enter deity of your choice here) calls they will hang up the phone. I don't really give a rats arse if you believe or not, but I hope in my ramblings to leave a little bit of doubt in the equation, so if that voice says "DUCK" you don't ignore it.
You can call it intuition, I say it's more akin to a collective consciousness, more than intuition. And from experience it can be very insistent, which leads me to believe it is probably not coming from within.
I'm going to call it the "Holy Ghost" for lack of a better description. It's kind of like trying to describe the color blue to a blind person. You've either experienced it or you haven't.
But on a pure survival level, a wise person would leave the door open to most any and all possibilities. Nothing to be lost keeping an open mind, possibly a lot to loose.

I agree… to a point. Someone once said if your mind is to open your brains will fall out. Sometimes there comes a point when you have to say “yep, that’s the answer.” An example of something that (most) everyone is closed minded on is 1+1=2. You might catch me and say 1+1=01 and smile saying you were using binary, but if you said 1+1=11 I would say you’re doing it wrong. I wouldn’t say “well if that’s what you want to believe.” Well, actually if you gave me a hard time about it I probably would say that (as long as they’re not working in the nuclear program), but it wouldn’t make 1+1=11. There is no open mindedness and no argument you could put together that would sway me. You could talk about alternate universes or magical theories all you want but the truth is, next time I did my check book 1+1 would equal 2.

Religion is not so easy to quantify. It’s a very complicated problem involving human nature, human training, human feelings, human history, and plenty of other human factors. There is a common denominator though – human. And we were just smart enough a few thousand years ago to come up with some incredibly wrong theories to why everything is. As wrong and contradictory as they are they do make us feel good. So what’s the harm if 2+2=11?

And, I too care about my fellow human beings. I would just hate to see them have to go through life misinformed.

I am curious if the athiest groups pass the plate near the end of their gatherings? If they collectively own property? Have a book of actions and reactions? If they expand/promulgate will they have rifts, divisions and controversies? Is the Church of Scientology an athiest bastion?

I don't know. I am not attempting levity, though it may be funny. Nor am I attempting to belittle anyone's feelings or beliefs, though some questions may be pointed. I am simply curious.

My suggestion would be to go to one and report back.

Yeah, I was just picking on that one...


See, it's one thing to have a differing opinion, but another thing with a lot of what you see on the forums here. It comes out as a Christian vs Atheist fight, and it's just silly to me. As a Christian, my heart should be to reach out in peace to atheists, and if the opportunity arises, to try and show them what I've found. FIghting doesn't quite accomplish that... For atheists, if a Christian tries to share his/her faith, we're not trying to condemn, we're just concerned for where you're going after we're done on this Earth. Even if you don't believe in a need to be right with God, at least understand the motivation. Still tell us to go away if you don't wanna hear it, but ya know, we're not (most of us at least) trying to call you an evil, bad person. We're no better.

I don't anticipate problems, but will keep that in mind.

One man’s silly is another man’s serious.

I know a person; I’ve known him over 5 years. We’ve been wheeling together almost every other weekend for about a year and a half now. He comes over my house and drinks a few beers (but don’t’ tell his wife). I’ve helped him build sliders and put a 3:1 kit in his transfer case among other projects. I’m pretty sure he is religious and goes to church every Sunday, but I really don’t know because the subject never came up… in over 5 years. Go figure, a hard core atheist like me and a religious man getting along?

As far as reminding me of where I’m going after I die, meh, I’ve been around the sun 50 times now… heard it all before. Just don’t get to upset when I tell you you’re wrong.

It’s the weekend for me, see you on Monday… if were not deleted.

 

[8Mud]

I agree… to a point. Someone once said if your mind is to open your brains will fall out. Sometimes there comes a point when you have to say “yep, that’s the answer.” An example of something that (most) everyone is closed minded on is 1+1=2. You might catch me and say 1+1=01 and smile saying you were using binary, but if you said 1+1=11 I would say you’re doing it wrong. I wouldn’t say “well if that’s what you want to believe.” Well, actually if you gave me a hard time about it I probably would say that (as long as they’re not working in the nuclear program), but it wouldn’t make 1+1=11. There is no open mindedness and no argument you could put together that would sway me. You could talk about alternate universes or magical theories all you want but the truth is, next time I did my check book 1+1 would equal 2.

Religion is not so easy to quantify. It’s a very complicated problem involving human nature, human training, human feelings, human history, and plenty of other human factors. There is a common denominator though – human. And we were just smart enough a few thousand years ago to come up with some incredibly wrong theories to why everything is. As wrong and contradictory as they are they do make us feel good. So what’s the harm if 2+2=11?

And, I too care about my fellow human beings. I would just hate to see them have to go through life misinformed.

You kind of cut through to the core, where does delusion end and schizophrenia begin. The answer is relevance. Is religion irrelevant to a modern scientific world?
IMO definitely no, for the simple reason, beyond the dogma it is for many people almost instinctual. And ask most any researcher, some of the biggest discoveries in modern science, are instinctual.
Having worked fairly extensively with numbers for a large portion of my life, perfect equations are rare. Calculators will and can lie to you.
I've told this story before, there was a stretch of road I drove daily on my 180 MPH motorcycle. A gradual right hand sweeper, that I generally drove at a round 160 MPH, my right knee a few inches from the pavement. Anybody who has driven a bike before knows it is a big gyroscope and changes of direction at 160 MPH are kind of like turning a boat, you have to plan your track well ahead of time.
Before trimming out and going throttle down, I see a picture on the inside of my visor of a shed truck tire in the fast lane, well around the curve in a blind spot from where I'm at. Shake my head and say to myself stop day dreaming. The picture returns, I say what the heck and drive around the curve at 50 MPH or so in the slow lane. Imagine my surprise when I see a tire exactly where the picture showed me it would be. I parked my bike, ran across the interstate and threw it over the guard rail.
Is illusion, delusion or even schizophrenia a handicap if it saves your arse? Does it really make any difference what you call it? Sometimes it doesn't add up, it just is.

 

[hubs97xj]

If it makes one irrational all of the time, then yes, it is a handicap. Avoiding a tire in the road is hardly supernatural- I drive the same stretch of highway 5 or 6 days a week through the summer, at least twice a day. I'm perpetually on the lookout for headon collisions- and I normally find at least one a week to avoid. That hardly speaks of intuition to me- it's a normal behavior to avoid threats to my well-being. Survival is instinctual- religion and science are not.

 

[Darky]

I agree… to a point. Someone once said if your mind is to open your brains will fall out. Sometimes there comes a point when you have to say “yep, that’s the answer.” An example of something that (most) everyone is closed minded on is 1+1=2. You might catch me and say 1+1=01 and smile saying you were using binary, but if you said 1+1=11 I would say you’re doing it wrong. I wouldn’t say “well if that’s what you want to believe.” Well, actually if you gave me a hard time about it I probably would say that (as long as they’re not working in the nuclear program), but it wouldn’t make 1+1=11. There is no open mindedness and no argument you could put together that would sway me. You could talk about alternate universes or magical theories all you want but the truth is, next time I did my check book 1+1 would equal 2.

Religion is not so easy to quantify. It’s a very complicated problem involving human nature, human training, human feelings, human history, and plenty of other human factors. There is a common denominator though – human. And we were just smart enough a few thousand years ago to come up with some incredibly wrong theories to why everything is. As wrong and contradictory as they are they do make us feel good. So what’s the harm if 2+2=11?

And, I too care about my fellow human beings. I would just hate to see them have to go through life misinformed.




My suggestion would be to go to one and report back.




One man’s silly is another man’s serious.

I know a person; I’ve known him over 5 years. We’ve been wheeling together almost every other weekend for about a year and a half now. He comes over my house and drinks a few beers (but don’t’ tell his wife). I’ve helped him build sliders and put a 3:1 kit in his transfer case among other projects. I’m pretty sure he is religious and goes to church every Sunday, but I really don’t know because the subject never came up… in over 5 years. Go figure, a hard core atheist like me and a religious man getting along?

As far as reminding me of where I’m going after I die, meh, I’ve been around the sun 50 times now… heard it all before. Just don’t get to upset when I tell you you’re wrong.

It’s the weekend for me, see you on Monday… if were not deleted.

See, and that's what I'm getting at, just cuz we have different beliefs, neither has to resort to name calling. You know that, I know that, unfortunately many don't. On both sides. The majority of the people I've grown up with and spent time with were either atheist or agnostic. We all got along great. The subject would come up every once in a while, we'd talk, we'd move on.

 

[o2bgpn]

You kind of cut through to the core, where does delusion end and schizophrenia begin. The answer is relevance. Is religion irrelevant to a modern scientific world?
IMO definitely no, for the simple reason, beyond the dogma it is for many people almost instinctual. And ask most any researcher, some of the biggest discoveries in modern science, are instinctual.
Having worked fairly extensively with numbers for a large portion of my life, perfect equations are rare. Calculators will and can lie to you.
I've told this story before, there was a stretch of road I drove daily on my 180 MPH motorcycle. A gradual right hand sweeper, that I generally drove at a round 160 MPH, my right knee a few inches from the pavement. Anybody who has driven a bike before knows it is a big gyroscope and changes of direction at 160 MPH are kind of like turning a boat, you have to plan your track well ahead of time.
Before trimming out and going throttle down, I see a picture on the inside of my visor of a shed truck tire in the fast lane, well around the curve in a blind spot from where I'm at. Shake my head and say to myself stop day dreaming. The picture returns, I say what the heck and drive around the curve at 50 MPH or so in the slow lane. Imagine my surprise when I see a tire exactly where the picture showed me it would be. I parked my bike, ran across the interstate and threw it over the guard rail.
Is illusion, delusion or even schizophrenia a handicap if it saves your arse? Does it really make any difference what you call it? Sometimes it doesn't add up, it just is.

The biggest discoveries are instinctual? Not quite sure what you mean here. And I disagree, religion, or even instinct, is not necessary to practice good science. Mater of fact, I think it would hinder good science because you have a presupposition of what the outcome should be or how something should fit in with your beliefs. Sort of like thinking the Earth is the center of the Universe then coming up with models to show how it works.

Speaking motorcycles, a couple of incidences come to mind with your story. First incident; we (wife, Mom {who was visiting} and I) were traveling on a winding road up a canyon from Cochem (a day of tourist sight seeing ). We were tooling along at a normal click when we were passed by a bike leaning hard in the turns. I thought not much of it... seen it plenty of times in Germany. Around the next turn we saw his bike mangled in the guard rail. He was on his hands and knees obviously dazed. I was first on the scene and got out to help him to the side of the road. As he was sitting on the guard rail what struck me was his gloves (he was wearing full leathers) were chewed down to the skin and his knuckles were bleeding. Aside from being dazed from the fall I think his knuckles were the worst of his injuries. To be sure, his leathers weren't going to catch top dollar at a yard sale anymore, but he got off easy.

Story two, second hand; My brother was supposed to come up from Ramstein to visit (I was stationed at Spangdahlem). He should have been at our house around 4 or so. He showed up near midnight and he wasn't "normal." His story; he was driving along at his normal Autobahn speed of around 120 mph (he had a little Honda CRX) when a bike, guy and girl as passenger, passed him at an impressive speed. I think he said he was second on the scene. Same story for the bike, mangled in the guard rail. Different story for the riders. Both killed, he said the driver was nearly decapitated. It was drizzling at the time, which I'm sure was the cause (besides speed).

I relate these stories not to say speed kills. I've done my share of time at 240 kph (though it's been on 4 wheels). What I've got to ask is why didn't they see it coming?

I do know what you're saying though, there are times you know something is going to happen and it does. But, there are also times you know something is going to happen and it doesn't. And to complicate matters, most of the time you have no idea something is going to happen and it does anyway.

The mind is a complicated thing with an enormous amount of uncorrelated data you've collected over however many years. All with different degrees of connective potential. I'm not even going to guess what the probabilities are that one could be riding down a familiar road with a known dangerous curve and imagine a tire in the road, and then actually have a tire in the road. I can say it doesn't have to be considered a miraculous occurrence, just highly unlikely. There are hundreds?, thousands?, probably millions (and more) of highly unlikely things happening every day. Sort of a contradiction isn't it. It's an almost certainty that everyone will have something highly unlikely happen to them.

And this is probably my last post in this thread. It just takes up too much of my time. Sorry.

 

[8Mud]

The biggest discoveries are instinctual? Not quite sure what you mean here. And I disagree, religion, or even instinct, is not necessary to practice good science. Mater of fact, I think it would hinder good science because you have a presupposition of what the outcome should be or how something should fit in with your beliefs. Sort of like thinking the Earth is the center of the Universe then coming up with models to show how it works.

Speaking motorcycles, a couple of incidences come to mind with your story. First incident; we (wife, Mom {who was visiting} and I) were traveling on a winding road up a canyon from Cochem (a day of tourist sight seeing ). We were tooling along at a normal click when we were passed by a bike leaning hard in the turns. I thought not much of it... seen it plenty of times in Germany. Around the next turn we saw his bike mangled in the guard rail. He was on his hands and knees obviously dazed. I was first on the scene and got out to help him to the side of the road. As he was sitting on the guard rail what struck me was his gloves (he was wearing full leathers) were chewed down to the skin and his knuckles were bleeding. Aside from being dazed from the fall I think his knuckles were the worst of his injuries. To be sure, his leathers weren't going to catch top dollar at a yard sale anymore, but he got off easy.

Story two, second hand; My brother was supposed to come up from Ramstein to visit (I was stationed at Spangdahlem). He should have been at our house around 4 or so. He showed up near midnight and he wasn't "normal." His story; he was driving along at his normal Autobahn speed of around 120 mph (he had a little Honda CRX) when a bike, guy and girl as passenger, passed him at an impressive speed. I think he said he was second on the scene. Same story for the bike, mangled in the guard rail. Different story for the riders. Both killed, he said the driver was nearly decapitated. It was drizzling at the time, which I'm sure was the cause (besides speed).

I relate these stories not to say speed kills. I've done my share of time at 240 kph (though it's been on 4 wheels). What I've got to ask is why didn't they see it coming?

I do know what you're saying though, there are times you know something is going to happen and it does. But, there are also times you know something is going to happen and it doesn't. And to complicate matters, most of the time you have no idea something is going to happen and it does anyway.

The mind is a complicated thing with an enormous amount of uncorrelated data you've collected over however many years. All with different degrees of connective potential. I'm not even going to guess what the probabilities are that one could be riding down a familiar road with a known dangerous curve and imagine a tire in the road, and then actually have a tire in the road. I can say it doesn't have to be considered a miraculous occurrence, just highly unlikely. There are hundreds?, thousands?, probably millions (and more) of highly unlikely things happening every day. Sort of a contradiction isn't it. It's an almost certainty that everyone will have something highly unlikely happen to them.

And this is probably my last post in this thread. It just takes up too much of my time. Sorry.

My point was if you leave your mind open to the possibility, you may get a warning someday that saves your bacon. If you are positively sure there is no such thing as (intervention for lack of a better word) you might close your mind to the warning.
Read some about Albert Einstein, from what he says most of his theories were instinctual and then he set about proving them. Much of science is first the idea, then the proof or the method.
I absolutely refused to go down to the concessions and join the crowds at the Ramstein Air show in 88. I'm not generally am assertive type, but that day I just up and refused, the group I went with actually followed my lead. We found a vantage point well away from the action on a hill top, spread the blankets, made a picnic and watched the two Italian jets crash into the crowd.
Or the pass I just up and refused to drive down in Nam, told a Colonel where to shove his direct order.
All I'm saying is, there is something going on that defies explanation. Some people try to understand it using religion, some deny it even exists. I believe most all people have it, though through training and conditioning they ignore it on various levels. Maybe reading the Bible is helpful in recognizing it when it does happen and helps separate it from daydream or imagination.

 

[o2bgpn]

I understand, hence this line “I do know what you're saying though, there are times you know something is going to happen and it does. But, there are also times you know something is going to happen and it doesn't. And to complicate matters, most of the time you have no idea something is going to happen and it does anyway.” I have experienced what I would call luck or coincidence and my bacon has been saved. Proof of the fact is I’m still alive.

I think what you’re trying to get at is we all have magic powers and can see into the future, albeit fuzzily. I don’t buy it.

Why do I keep responding?

 

[o2bgpn]

I don’t buy it.

... and neither did Einstein.

 

[kujito]

Why do I keep responding?

Dunno, but it's good reading.
That avatar's a little creepy though.