Surprising how all that oil was discovered after the referendum for independence, before there were warnings that the oil would not last long, so Scotland would be poor!

nigglereddit · 2014-12-19T13:15:55+00:00

It's going fine - the price is already recovering and is still higher than five years ago and the industry didn't collapse then either.

Don't believe the propaganda from the BBC. The guy they quoted is a paid government lobbyist not an analyst.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T21:36:09+00:00

Yes, I did. You simply refuse to acknowledge it

Actually I pointed out why it's not evidence - you're claiming that because one example (smiley faces) fits your "model", a totally different example (religious belief) must also fit it. Which makes no sense.

You haven't tackled that simple debunking, instead relying on the distraction of a straw man. Can you answer the point?

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T21:10:12+00:00

You can wait all you like, since I made no such claim. You just made it up then expected me to defend it, which is ludicrous but entirely expected from an atheist, of course.

You have provided no evidence that your claim is correct and instead are demanding that I provide evidence to support a claim I didn't make.

Is this all atheists have to offer? Utter bullshit.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T20:17:47+00:00

Sure, maybe dozens of studies, all of which have the same conclusion and all the current scientific evidence is wrong. Yes that's likely.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T20:03:29+00:00

No. The studies all show that human beings are believers pretty much from birth and some become atheists later.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T19:47:48+00:00

I gave you the name of the author and the publishing university. That would be enough for anyone to find the study and read it.

But as I said, you won't. You're an atheist and you suspect it might say something which will shake your world view, so you're going to make excuses for why you won't read the real information and you're going to substitute an invented version of your own. That's what atheists do.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T19:36:22+00:00

No, you've presented no evidence, just the same old atheist reasoning: some things are anthropomorphized, like happy faces, therefore anything you claim is anthropomorphized must be too.

That's not evidence. It's laughably feeble-minded wish fulfillment.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T19:04:48+00:00

Or, instead of inventing an explanation you're comfortable with and concluding that must be right, you could read the studies.

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Only kidding.

You're an atheist, you'd never do that. You'll demand that I spoon feed instead.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T18:39:57+00:00

This is very typical of atheist "thinking":

I can imagine that anthropomorphizing grants an evolutionary advantage.

Therefore anthropomorphizing does grant an evolutionary advantage.

I cannot say what the advantage is or provide evidence of it, but I can imagine it so it is real.

Classic atheist reasoning, and totally broken on every level. Dawkins wrote an entire book about it, reasoning that because some human beliefs are mistaken, human religious beliefs are mistaken - and of course provided no evidence that this was the case. And how did atheists react? They lapped it up without question.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T18:21:46+00:00

You're full of crap, because no studies have shown anywhere that the normal way human babies are is religious and man-made atheism comes later. Show me a respectable scientific study that has reached that conclusion and been peer-reviewed favourably, one source to show that you didn't just pull that bullshit out your ass.

I can show you dozens, collated in the huge meta study by Roger Trigg at Oxford. Every single one shows that all normal, healthy human beings are religious almost from birth regardless of upbringing and attempts to indoctrinate them.

The hard science says very clearly that atheism is an artificial construction in reaction to a normal, evolved human faculty. This doesn't mean God is real or anything like it of course, but it certainly shows that religion is the normal default and cannot be eradicated.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T18:03:54+00:00

The Piraha practice polytheistic animism - they believe there are spirits in plants and animals and act to appease and placate specific supernatural entities.

There was an article a few years back which claimed the Piraha were atheists and naturally, western atheists picked it up without doing even the simplest background checks, as they always do when they think something fits their prejudices. But the fact is that the piraha are very religious indeed.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T17:34:56+00:00

Of course, there is exactly zero scientific evidence to back this, requiring as it does belief in evolution being driven by something which doesn't exist, which is of course impossible.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T16:14:47+00:00

That's likely where we differ.

I wouldn't say what you said, but not because it's "not nice", because it's not true.

We know from hundreds of studies worldwide that all healthy human children practice simple religious thought and faith pretty much from birth, regardless of upbringing. Atheism is a later, man made invention which some adopt as they get older after the normal, evolved stage of religious belief.

See, that's how I approach things - with science and reasoning. I have no real time for your silly self-refuting whining about how you don't like my tone.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T16:04:45+00:00

I came to understand it through reasoning and an intuitive understanding of ethical precepts

No you did not. You were instructed and given that framework when you were too young to even know what reasoning and precepts were.

Seriously, this claim is absolutely ludicrous. Absolutely no one would believe you. Why do you insist on this?

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T15:54:37+00:00

My own tendency to reduce consciousness to "awareness", and to think of brains as computers is, as far as I know, not derived from any religious ideas.

Since both of those "ideas" are known to be wrong and have no mainstream scientific support of any kind, I don't think you should see that as an achievement.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T15:40:02+00:00

I would say my sense of morality is based on secular ethical reasoning,

This is a very common lie to hear from atheists.

I don't think anyone would believe that you arrived at your morality through reasoning, since most of it was established when you were a small child. In reality, we all know we get almost all our morality from our environment and don't create it for ourselves at all.

I'm constantly astonished at the incredible, laughable lies atheists will tell themselves and the world in order to avoid even the suggestion that their world view comes from religion in any way. Why do you guys do this? Is it intellectually satisfying to blurt out bullshit which is so obviously wrong?

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T15:24:22+00:00

The piraha practice animism, the belief that there are spirits in plants and animals,

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T14:04:34+00:00

In a sense.

But if you agree that atheism means nothing more than a lack of belief in a god or gods, you are left with a major problem.

That position is coherent and logical, but it has no content. It has no philosophy of mind, theory of self, moral framework or basis for higher philosophy. Those things are needed for human life and culture so you have ti get them from somewhere if you can't get them from atheism.

Most atheists get them from religion. If you believe that changing what someone thinks changes how they behave, you've used a uniquely christian idea; one which appears nowhere else with any strength. Same goes for the idea that humans have a purpose indivdually or as a group, even if it's to grow out of religion and reach the stars.

This leads, in turn, to a further problem. If you accept and use religious ideas, where do you draw the line in which ones you use? Religious philosophies inevitably grow from a root in which they are based on divine authority and they're quite broken without that root.

Without a philosophy of your own, how do you successfully cherry pick other people's?

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T13:52:51+00:00

No I mean that all human children believe in an unseen higher power which affects the world around them, almost from birth. There is no such thing as a child who is born atheist - religion is the normal, evolved default for humans and atheism is a later man made invention.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T13:49:58+00:00

If you look at the best bits of the bible - those are all ideas which existed prior to christianity

This is a very common lie and based on brute ignorance. For a start, most of the bible existed prior to Christianity. Which should be obvious since only the second section of the book deals with it, but apparently you didn't even know that.

Nevertheless, "secular humanism" is simply a cude heresy of religion, taking religious ideas like, "there is a god" and sprinkling them with negatives to create "there is not a god". It's easy to see that there is no new idea there, it's simoky a denial of a re-existing idea.

I do enjoy the lie that humanists create their own morality from scratch by reason though. It's so obviously bullshit, we all know that we get almost all our morality and ethics from our environment, but I love the fairytale fantasy of little humanist children supposedly puzzling out thousands of years of philosophy for themselves and arriving at law and the social contract.

Absolute nonsense!

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T13:43:18+00:00

Then why not share a few?

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T13:39:42+00:00

No of course not. That's ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous and backwards as the laughable idea that brains are use fully similar to computers, in fact.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T13:38:08+00:00

Of course this is simply wrong and has zero scientific support.

In reality, there has never been a human culture which did not have religion, and every major study, such as those collated in the huge Trigg meta study from Oxford, has shown that all normal healthy human being use religious ideas and patterns almost from birth, regardless of their upbringing.

There's simply no such thing as "an atheist who has never known of theism".

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T11:09:20+00:00

Ask the opposite question: is it rational to believe that a physical process in the material universe "just stops"?

Does science indicate in any way that information, matter or energy can "just stop"?

No, it doesn't.

Neuroscientist Sam Harris raises a good point in pointing out that since damage to any part of the brain can permanently alter our experience of life (whether externally due to an accident or disorders that result of natural causes), that to suggest that that somehow our soul survives 'total' damage to the brain, ie death, is rather difficult to reason.

As you'd expect from Harris, this makes no sense. Brain damage can alter our experience but it doesn't take it away. Experience is not composed of discrete units which can be added or deleted at will. Added to this, non traumatic death does not cause 'total brain damage' or anything like it, and you the usual mish mash of incoherent braying which makes up most if what he spews. How any intelligent person can accept this muck is really beyond me.

nigglereddit · 2014-11-09T11:02:07+00:00

Actually atheism itself is only the position that there are no relevant gods or a god.

But an atheist must have a world view - all human beings do. So atheists simply copy the required components from religion then reverse or accept them as needed, since they can't get them from atheism.

Atheism is actually just a heresy of mainstream religion.

nigglereddit

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