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Reading the bible is the surest path to atheism

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DavidV

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Telling Christians where they went wrong may be easy and perhaps even fun, but if you are really interested in intellectual activism, you should consider a more productive use of your time than trying to sneak ideas into a hostile environment. People who frequently engage in online debates are just as likely to be debating for the sake of argument as trying to get to the truth of the matter.

Edited by GreedyCapitalist
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I'd advice against trying to find her on Facebook. Not that I don't feel for her. But, we are all strangers here and my experiences with these situations leads me to believe that people view it as creepy if strangers start PMing you about random stuff. Woman especially seem to get creeped out, regardless of intentions.

:dough:

Well, the fact that she put such a personal appeal to strangers on an internet forum seems to point to her being open to the possibility of personal discussions with strangers online. If she gets "creeped out", it's her loss.

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Telling Christians where they went wrong may be easy and perhaps even fun, but if you are really interested in intellectual activism, you should consider a more productive use of your time than trying to sneak ideas into a hostile environment. People who frequently engage in online debates are just as likely to be debating for the sake of argument as trying to get to the truth of the matter.

Or in other words:

retarded.jpg

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Also, the analogy with the Soviets is incorrect: this is not about building walls to keep people out.

Not really incorrect. They didn't call it the Iron Curtian for nothing. The Soviets attempted to keep Western ideas out, much like the Chritians on that site. Not allowing an opposing view, or at least extremely limited participation stacks the deck in thier favor. This is SOP for fundamentalist sites, as well as Konspiracy kook sites, because they have no cogent response to the interjection of reason into thier fantasy world.

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I agree with Greebo. Be respectful of their rights.

Also, the analogy with the Soviets is incorrect: this is not about building walls to keep people out. We do exactly the same thing here. We would not tolerate Christians coming here and trying to convert people.

As if they had a chance to do that.

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:lol:

Well, the fact that she put such a personal appeal to strangers on an internet forum seems to point to her being open to the possibility of personal discussions with strangers online. If she gets "creeped out", it's her loss.

She didn't post with here real name though. She probably feels that she has a certain amount of anominity(sp?) on that forum and would be creeped out. If some christian found me on facebook and started telling me I was wrong, I would be wierded out. :)

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Some of the forums restrict things you can do (like PMing) until you have participated enough: e.g. posted NN times. There was one forum that allowed you to PM people and do some other things (like add a signature) if you got a certain number of "blessings". Posting was a way to earn blessings, but others could also bless you, but having over some of their blessings.

I think implementing such a system here wouldn't be too bad. Adopt-a-newbie, in a way. It would be a good way of vetting the trolls, the antagonist 'sort-kinda-Objectivism-has-some-good-elements', as well as encouraging the good, honest kind of person.

What would be a better phrase than blessings?

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I think implementing such a system here wouldn't be too bad. Adopt-a-newbie, in a way. It would be a good way of vetting the trolls, the antagonist 'sort-kinda-Objectivism-has-some-good-elements', as well as encouraging the good, honest kind of person.

Nah. Let 'em swim or sink on thier merits. Trolls are quickly found out, and fun to spit and roast over an open fire.

What would be a better phrase than blessings?

On most forums, reputation. I don't like the idea, it turns people into rep whores, and others use negative rep to discredit the other posters. Bad idea.

Edited by Maximus
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On most forums, reputation. I don't like the idea, it turns people into rep whores, and others use negative rep to discredit the other posters. Bad idea.

Yeah, I remember that on Sparknotes (which used to be a good discussion site before they sold out) - I'd respond to all these scientific questions on evolution and astronomy, and fundies would come along and vote all my posts down. They'd go through my entire history of posts and vote them all down. They'd create multiple user accounts to increase the damage.

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By the way, if anyone talks to a poster named "Cliff," tell him I said hi. I've had several debates with him, and he's the one who has banned me all 3 times after he realized he wasn't going to convert me. I started a couple threads a while back providing links and detailing my conversations with him. He's something of a moron.

PS: I seem to have become unbanned, somehow.

Edited by The Wrath
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post-1-1230653744_thumb.jpg

She sounds like me from about seven years ago and it's a hard place to be. I was raised in a very sheltered, Christian home and went to Bible college after high school. Taking classes like Ministry to Children opened my eyes to exactly why I believed what I had always assumed to be true (there are very specific processes and tactics to get a child to belive something, base their entire sense of self and self-esteem on it and never question it, it's practically a science), and I realized that if I was going to make any sort of career out of indoctrinating children to believe those same things I should really try to understand exactly what I was saying (at that point I didn't have a problem with the indoctrination itself, as long as I thought it was true). Studying deeper lead to asking what I thought were simple, obvious questions, such as "what is a god, anyway"?. Those kinds of questions can really get you into a lot of trouble at Bible college, turns out, so I went to another college on the other side of the country to see if they could tell me anything. No luck. It's strange how vicious people can be towards someone for simply refusing to lie to children :lol:

Anyway if she's asking questions like that then she knows, or soon will, that she has a simple choice between owning herself or throwing her mind away to the highest bidder. Which is what it comes down to, of course. Maybe some people never consider the facts because it honestly never crosses their mind - they just never notice any contradictions for whatever reason. But once you do notice and ask, there's no turning back to "innocent ignorance" - if she remains a Christian now she'll always know that she's lying to herself. There's no point in trying to help her, really; there are plenty of smart, logical people who wouldn't be in church if they could see it as the matter of simple addition that it is. Instead it's a fundamental choice between her own integrity and whatever she's now getting from her religion (acceptance from family/church, colour-by-numbers worldview ... changing your mind is hard work!).

On the other hand, it took me six years after realizing that Christianity wasn't true, to figure out what is true. Namely, A = A - a concept I'm sure I could have grasped by about age 4 if I'd just been left alone to figure it out. We're talking about millions of dollars and formative childhood years being spent wiring people's brains to belive they're being constantly watched by a vindictive deity, that matter isn't ever only matter, that minds are mystically connected, that spiritual health is a real concern, that the "good" is only knowable through mysticism and irrationality and that eternal suffering is an eminent possibility. That's difficult stuff to dig yourself out of, especially if the only options presented to you are basically the same mystic bullshit with an even less optimistic outlook (after leaving Bible college I took Philosophy in university, thinking that I'd find something better. A whole year after graduation I finally found Atlas Shrugged and knew immediately that I'd finally found something that all added up). The truth should be totally obvious but it's actually really difficult to find, even for someone who was looking as hard as I was.

I guess my point is that people like this woman and myself are/were actively looking for the truth and know they are being fed lies. If they could find something true they'd probably recognize it, but the fact is that it's bullshit no matter where you look. Reality isn't rocket science, it's just being actively covered up by groups with a lot of money and resources and a very organized task force. You can't fight it on a message board. I've been wracking my brain for a year trying to figure out how to tell the truth to people who belive that thinking will get them tourtured for eternity but I don't know how it could be done.

The best I can come up with is just to stay the hell away from Christian message boards, so I can at least avoid doing too much of this :) But the fact is that for every one of me, who decided against the odds to take responsibility for my own mind, there are a hundred new Christians preaching and practicing altruism and doing their best to make it harder for everyone to live life qua man.

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Nah. Let 'em swim or sink on thier merits. Trolls are quickly found out, and fun to spit and roast over an open fire.

Well, to some people a troll is whoever disagrees with them in slightest. So, I'm willing to let some lesser obvious ones hang around for a while to see what's really up. :D

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I think implementing such a system here wouldn't be too bad. Adopt-a-newbie, in a way. It would be a good way of vetting the trolls, the antagonist 'sort-kinda-Objectivism-has-some-good-elements', as well as encouraging the good, honest kind of person.

What would be a better phrase than blessings?

A sort of selfish point system. Selfish points? Greed points? The greed-o-meter? :D

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A sort of selfish point system. Selfish points? Greed points? The greed-o-meter? :D

While I think that would be awesome in one sense, I think it might drive away newbies who are interested in the philosophy but have not yet cleansed their system of the negative connotations attached to words like "greed" and "selfishness".

Edited by brian0918
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While I think that would be awesome in one sense, I think it might drive away newbies who are interested in the philosophy but have not yet cleansed their system of the negative connotations attached to words like "greed" and "selfishness".

I don't know...the greed-o-meter sounds pretty cool :D

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Yeah, such point systems are

A ) A mockery of capitalism, as everyone starts out with the same amount and cannot make more through work but only through ass-kissing and bandwagon jumping. Also, the points are essentially useless as they cannot be spent on anything (except encouraging more people to kiss your ass and agree with you regardless of what you say)

B ) Irrelevant because if someone wanted to express approval or disapproval of a board user, they are free to do so in the thread where the errant comment was made or through the private-messaging service.

Edited by LiberTodd
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I never got how a rep system worked, although I think simply posting would be the best way to get known around these parts.

And I empathize with the girl, I know how her predicament. I came into Christianity when I was about 12 or 13, yet there was something always about it that I couldn't put my finger on, there was a part of my mind that felt uneasy about it, but I always silenced it. (Strangely enough, I almost never read my bible while I was part of the faith.)

I picked up The Fountainhead a month ago, which put the issues on the forefront of my mind, and then Atlas Shrugged gave me a complete break from it.

Edited by Sir Andrew
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I was raised in latin america in a sickeningly religious country (Ecuador). While I didn't fall into the swindle of full out christianity, as a kid I did get swindled into some mysticism. The magic-worshipping in Latin America is more overt, with relics and saints and magical trances and 'charismatics' (staples of Catholicism), whereas here in the US it's a little more insidious- Protestantism has done away with all of the magical trinkets and amulets, but magic is magic.

I feel very sorry for this girl, as I remember trying to conciliate the idea of original sin with the supposed 'love' that bastard of an imaginary Man on a Cloud allegedly felt. The second poster in that forum is right: Reason cannot match the two (or anything in the bible) with logic. You need to suppress your reason (or cause yourself a voluntary brain injury as per that recent study), and then you just don't have to think about it or the hobgoblin jumps out of the closet.

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You are wrong about the law. The fact that you claim to be a police officer is irrelevant.

He is right, there are cyber-stalking laws. This is really what I was trying to get at earlier about creeping the girl out. It's sad, but true. Let David handle it.

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