(A master like Mark Twain? I would have to get up pretty early in the morning to think that I could top his linguistic skill.)

Linguistic skills do not equal skills of persuasion.

csdeven Vs.Loundry

The bigot who wants to see any one who believes in the “non-sense” of the bible taken down a peg or two, should go head to head against the bigot who hates all who show any prejudice against the Mormons.(who also follow the bible)

Just out of curiosity where are csdeven and his buddy vanceone? Do they only believe in defending their faith from evangelical Christians? It seems odd that given the attacks that Loundry has made against everyone who even makes some claim to having any connection to the teachings of Jesus Christ that csdeven isn’t right up front in this, and the previous “pray for rain” post, defending his beliefes from some one who is even more outspoken in his bigotry.

Man, the spittle alone (if it could be somehow harnessed) from that exchange could resolve the drought problems in Georgia. Or perhaps this is some kind of bizzar Jekyll and Hyde thing, where depending upon the direction the wind is blowing, or whatever, csdeven transforms into Loundry and attacks all that is Holy, and then later transforms back and attacks all who are bigoted towards Mormons? Or twins seperated at birth! One good the other evil!…wait how could we tell? If one wins then the Mormons will over run the earth demanding that all accept them as Christians, if the other, then rabid foaming at the mouth anti-Christians will over run the earth demanding that we all admit that J.C. was 2 bit hack magician! Oh God, the horror THE HORROR! We can’t let them meet! it would be matter and anti-matter of equal proportions! NONE WOULD SURVIVE!

Oh no, I used both their names in the same post! Its too late, the end of times is here! Everybody fall back we have to nuke the site from orbit! Its the only way to be safe!

no wait that would just be silly.

Sorry folks, I don’t know what came over me.

you rarely post any of your own thoughts. (I do lots of that. Many people think too much. Some people think way too much.) You even frequently use the same quotes over and over again. (That’s because they fit what is being said over and over again.)

Is that a defense mechanism for deflecting criticism by making arguments through other people, or are you just convinced the arguments are more persuasive when they come from famous smart people? (A master like Mark Twain? I would have to get up pretty early in the morning to think that I could top his linguistic skill.)

Esthier on November 15, 2007 at 11:06 PM

MB4 on November 15, 2007 at 9:59 PM

I’d like to assume you’re intelligent, but you rarely post any of your own thoughts. You even frequently use the same quotes over and over again.

Is that a defense mechanism for deflecting criticism by making arguments through other people, or are you just convinced the arguments are more persuasive when they come from famous smart people?

-The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food.

Query 17, which I originally quoted, and where your quote comes as well. Here is the rest of it.

-Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves. But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. “No two, say I, have established the same.” Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments? Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without any establishment at all.

Of course from query 19 we get

-Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

And of course the letter to Peter Carr comes several much better examples of his beliefs.

-The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.

-Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

-But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it.

Of course he also says

-Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a god, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love.

In a later letter, this time to Francis Hopkinson he says

-I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.

He also says this about religious tyranny

-I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

On religion in general,

-He who steadily observes the moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.

-Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites, would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings but theirs.

-Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

-In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
-The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter … But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

Hmm, pretty complicated guy that Thomas Jefferson. Obviously someone who was capable of deep thought, and great intelligence.

I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said “it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Bigkatt on November 15, 2007 at 9:10 PM

I have examined all the known superstitions of the world and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.
- Thomas Jefferson

I would think reservoirs would be in place and have the capacity to handle that much less rain. I mean lets face it, the only water that is REALLY wasted is the water that never gets collected and used. There was probably ample rain it they would have had ample reservoir capacity. I’m only speculating but I bet there has been a lot of build up of housing and nobody in the state government is tending to the fact that means you need more reservoir capacity.

Up to last month they have had 26 inches of rain for the year. Average is about 42 inches. Government really needs to be aware that more capacity is needed with a growing population. Probably twenty years ago 38% less than average rain would not have caused a panic because of far less use due to fewer people.

My point is…. that 26 inches average over the state is a lot of rain, this sound more like a failure on the state governments part to plan rather than any natural disaster.

Bottom line is they need to build more reservoirs so they don’t get caught short like this. Maybe… just maybe, this is God’s way of telling them to wake up and smell the coffee. When the population grows your need more reservoirs and if you don’t do that, well… it’s not God putting you in a bad situation, it’s your own lack of planning.

In cases like Loundry it goes even farther into the realm of vendetta. He has spent so much time and effort into vilifying the Christian god that it appears that he is in fact not an atheist at all. His arguments always read as if he truly believes that the God he hates so much is not only real, but the cause of all the pain he has received through out his life. Most atheist arguments are in fact calm deliberate attempts at pointing out the folly of believing in an invisible man who exists in the sky and knows all your innermost thoughts. Yet, Loundry repeatedly attacks God as if in a court of law, specifically Nuremberg. He is not the only one I have run into like this, but he is the one who is posting here.

Others of his ilk, at times, seem to be more upset that we do not follow ALL the laws as laid out in the bible. That we do not stone children to death for disobeying their parents, that we do not make blood sacrifices, and so on. Their argument is “you say you follow the word of GOD, and yet you haven’t slaughtered your daily quota of new born lambs? FOR SHAME!” Of course if we actually did this they would hold it over our heads how evil we are.

This particular group of atheists also seem to be unable to separate God from man, as if they are in fact one in the same. Blaming God for the evils that men do. MB4 quotes Mark Twain, the quote basically blames god for not making us perfect and happy, for daring in fact to create a flawed and imperfect creature who must struggle against its very nature in order to achieve its everlasting reward. This of course is if you ignore angels. (I know they don’t exist either do they atheists?)

In angels god created Twains perfect being, or good children as he called them. No pain, no sorrow, no worries, diseases or cares, and immortal. Yet in their perfection they were flawed. With no pain they had no compassion, without sorrow they had no happiness, and so on. He gave us balance, and with balance comes free will.

Christians often say that the reason for all the pain and sorrow in the world is due to original sin. But once again free will has something to do with it. In the old testament God was always killing people, or ordering people to be killed. However it must be remembered that his largest body count was from the flood.

The bible says that the flood was gods way of cleansing the world of the wickedness that man had become. After the flood he said that He would never do it again, that mankind from then on would have to fix its own problems. Free will is pointless if some one is pointing a gun at your head and telling you to be good or else, isn’t it? Yes there is punishment for doing bad, isn’t there always? Jesus died for our sins as some say, and will basically act as our advocate when we die and are judged.

Thats what it said in a pamphlet that the BN chaplain gave me anyways.

Dang I do run on don’t I? :-P sry

Even an atheist can learn much from the Bible and other ancient writings.

HeIsSailing on November 15, 2007 at 7:38 PM

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
- Issac Asimov

Well, lets see, we are given a set of rules to live by and we can’t seem to do it so, we are punished for it. I know you guys don’t get it. You won’t until you choose to believe in God. So that’s the last of my argument for this thread.

boomer on November 15, 2007 at 7:28 PM

A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell — mouths mercy, and invented hell — mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!
- Mark Twain

we are given a set of rules to live by and we can’t seem to do it so, we are punished for it. I know you guys don’t get it. You won’t until you choose to believe in God.

I don’t know, Boomer. I don’t believe in God, and I still get that basic principle. Many atheists seem to think the Christian version of God promises a cartoon world where everything is miraculously pain and problem free, and even I know that is just not the case. When they argue with that assumption, they frankly make themselves look pretty foolish.

Even atheists have to admit that the stuff in the Bible and other Scriptures did not just come out of thin air. They are not lies, deceptions, or thoughtless story-telling They are, at the very least, written very intelligent people who seriously struggled with problems like the pain and suffering in this world, and aren’t we blessed that they left their words and thoughts behind? Even an atheist can learn much from the Bible and other ancient writings.

Well, lets see, we are given a set of rules to live by and we can’t seem to do it so, we are punished for it. I know you guys don’t get it. You won’t until you choose to believe in God. So that’s the last of my argument for this thread.

It’s one word. SIN. Yep that’s it. Have a nice night.

boomer on November 15, 2007 at 7:15 PM

And whom, pray tell, could ever have created that now?

After reading all your comments, you’re kind of in a predicament with no faith or intelligence.

wytammic on November 15, 2007 at 6:21 PM

Loundry has intelligence, you are free to think that it is misdirected, but he clearly has it. Give the man his due anyway.

Dude, Thor is just an Asgard hologram.

Weight of Glory on November 15, 2007 at 11:13 AM

Stargate reference… SuhWeeet!

Having faith is a detriment. How about intelligence as a superior substitute?

After reading all your comments, you’re kind of in a predicament with no faith or intelligence.

Your team drew first blood.

I’m not a Christian, so I’m not sure what you are talking about.

agape,
robb

I ignore your vain attempt to turn this into some stupid ad hominem. Shouldn’t your god bear some responsibility in allowing the persistence of horrible human suffering, particularly since you clam that:

A) he loves us
B) he is omnipotent

You have kids. Are you saying you’ve never let them be unhappy for even a moment when it was in your power to make them happy?

Having faith is a detriment. How about intelligence as a superior substitute? (Where does the Bible praise intelligence as a virtue?)

Loundry on November 15, 2007 at 3:24 PM

The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it.
- Mark Twain

MB4 on November 15, 2007 at 4:39 PM

Or rather God doesn’t care so much for the intelligence of such a creature as man, the same way we couldn’t care less about the intelligence of fish.

“14 Therefore once more I will astound these people
with wonder upon wonder;
the wisdom of the wise will perish,
the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”" [ Isaiah 29:14]

Loundry on November 15, 2007 at 5:01 PM

What, did you get bored with talking to me?

Loundry on November 15, 2007 at 5:01 PM

Truly obsessed, ain’t ya?

Don’t you ever bore yourself?

Can you explain (in 5,000 words or less) how you are even a little bit different than a fundamentalist fire and brimstone Southern Baptist?

For bonus points: how old are you? Just curious.

Best part is I don’t even need to find this thread again. I can just catch you the next time you’re obsessing over your fundamental need to proselytize. Then you can tell me how old you are. ;)

It has only been one day. Do you expect God to deliver a foot or two of rain in one day?

Would that be asking too much of your god? Maybe he’s got a headache.

That would do horrific damage.

I don’t see how that would be a problem for an omnipotent god. Am I wrong in thinking that he can do anything?

Why should Christians take you seriously if you don’t even take them seriously?

As if Christians ever did take a gay ex-Christian like me seriously. Your team drew first blood. Does “Turn or burn!” ring a bell? I’m not a Christian, so I don’t have to forgive. And I don’t.

Really? When was the last time you prayed that a child not get raped?

Let’s do it immediately:

O Lord,

Please do not let any more children be raped, and I ask this in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.

Now let’s see if your god answers my prayer.

And if you did, did that child get raped anyway? You are implying this to be the case, you know.

HeIsSailing on November 15, 2007 at 4:36 PM

I ignore your vain attempt to turn this into some stupid ad hominem. Shouldn’t your god bear some responsibility in allowing the persistence of horrible human suffering, particularly since you clam that:

A) he loves us
B) he is omnipotent

And *especially* considering that Jesus Christ himself said that he would do ANYTHING if we asked it in his name?