/atheism/ - Atheism

>>10253

That I don't know.

>>10199

Kek.

>>1463

Mark 16:18

signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; 18they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."

Drink a pint of bleach, and we'll talk about your true religion, O.P.

>>10260

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_16#Scholarly_opinions

"Currently a majority of scholars agree that verses 9–20 were not part of the original text of Mark but represent a very early addition.[38]

Explaining his own belief as to why the verses were added, text critic and author Bart D. Ehrman says:

Jesus does rise from the dead in Mark's Gospel. The women go to the tomb, the tomb is empty and there is a man there who tells them that Jesus has been raised from the dead and that they are to go tell the disciples that this has happened. But then the Gospel ends in Codex Sinaiticus and other manuscripts by saying the women fled from the tomb and didn't say anything to anyone because they were afraid, period. That's where the Gospel ends. So nobody finds out about it, the disciples don't learn about it, the disciples never see Jesus after the resurrection, that's the end of the story. But later scribes couldn't handle this abrupt ending and they added the 12 verses people find in the King James Bible or other Bibles in which Jesus does appear to his disciples.[39]"

>>10263

Oh, so everything in the Gospel is the gospel truth except for the parts that obviously don't work.

Which turns out to be a lot of the Gospels…

Faith doesn't move mountains, and God doesn't grant any request made in Christ's name either.

>>10278

>Faith doesn't move mountains, and God doesn't grant any request made in Christ's name either.

How can you ever know you just didn't have enough faith to make the mountain move?

>>1463

Mark 7:2 Jesus tells you not to bother washing your hands to get rid of germs when you're about to eat. Just have a pure heart and you won't get poisoned yo.

>>10280

Maybe I know because no mountains have been moved by anyone ever.

Prayer doesn't work the way Christ promised it would.. neither does faith healing..

When your god starts doing something I'll consider paying attention to it.

>>10248

Laugh it up fuzz ball,,,

Farrakhan just called for volunteers who are willing to die.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-04/louis-farrakhan-urges-black-community-rise-and-kill-those-who-kill-us

Maybe it's the usual religious boiler plate bullshit.. Where we go to church and proclaim our love for the poor than ignore them for the rest of the week..

or maybe they believe,

Sincerity is not something we can recognize anymore.

>>10283

So it will be just like ferguson. Except now instead of nigs committing crimes, it will be nigs committing crimes in the name of Allah.

>>10274

Sounds like a good idea. I'm maybe an atheist but mythology is fun.

You should make a board about all mythologies the chances are higher that you don't get the /pol/ crowd and you get more users.

>>10275

A general mythology board would be cool. If only because it would be a suitable place to discuss Hellenism. The folks over at Asatru obviously don't have much interest in the Greek gods.

In a way I think I would have preferred that the greek/roman pantheon never lost its cultural influence on the west. If I had to choose a religion of course. They exalted art, achievement, and even openly questioned the gods. Outside of Gothic architecture and depictions of saints the Christians tend to openly spurn all of these things and the jews and muslims are even worse. What a damaging viewpoint to hold. At least Dionysus had good parties.

>>10274

That would be nice. Discussion would be stable I would think and not cancerous with the christfag invasion of /pol/. Though I do not think it would be very popular.

>>10281

>complains about sjws

>uses the sjws favorite word "problematic"

They try to turn "I don't like it" into "it's a real problem" without explaining shit with this phrase.

>>10257

Gawker is shit because it's nothing but blogging and shilling, not because of what it promotes. It wouldn't be as bad if they would prqomote whatever with arguments, even weak ones.

>>10264

If society would actively want to crumble, as opposed to the usual desire for change, then neither hiding behind the systems or enforcing the past ethics wouldn't stop it.

>>10265

> as opposed to the usual desire for change

Not all change is good change, crumbling is a form of change. Sometimes change is degeneracy, sometimes it is improvement. This is the problem with modern day progressivism, it seems to lack this concept and assume change = good.

>>10265

>Gawker is shit not because of what it promotes

I disagree, what they promote is just as bad as the shilling and blogging. It's modern day racism and sexism under the guise of anti-racism and anti-sexism. They are cancer through and through.

>>10266

I.e. Optimism and the will to experiment vs stagnation and regression. One path will lead us to the future, the other will shackle us to the slaveries of the past.

>>10267

Those are bad because they are almost exclusively promoted by shilling. If they would use arguments, they would expose themselves even more, but could claim some honesty.

>>10266

I don't think progressivism has ever had anything to do with significant change.

Both keeping a bad society going and crumbling a bad one are things that can only be controlled by those in it.

>>10134

You do it wrong there are already software that generates "personal" horoscopes. One click - 20 pages of nice sounding bullshit that is vaguely related to the birthdate/gender. People pay up to 30 bucks for that shit. Of course you have to let them wait for 3 days or they get suspicious.

If you do it in person try to visit other mediums (the successful ones) and play the gullible customer. You will be suprised how lazy they are.

This is the most important technique:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

Another important thing is confidence. If you are a skeptical person, you will most likely looking for the "but" in your and other peoples statements. Un-learn that!

If the customer point out flaws in your prediction, give them them the silent stare. They are the idiots who don't get it and they insult you with their stupid questions. Funny thing is: this social preasure will make them feel guilty and they will probably come up with an explaination why it totally makes sense.

It's some kind of art to trick people. It looks easy and it is for some people but reasonable people perform worse.

Try to lie to a mirror and try to make and empathic and convincing face without breaking the "kayfabe".

Try to improve body language. Slow, skilled confident moves are the way to go.

Look at all the Greek prophecies that could be true. How can the Oracle be right if the prophet isn't a Jew?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oracular_statements_from_Delphi#440_BC

I've always wondered how well I'd do as a preacher. I've got the public speaking skills for it, and I could really lay it on thick with the fire and brimstone, but I don't know if I could live with myself.

>>10259

>I don't know if I could live with myself.

A couple million dollars in your bank account says otherwise.

>>10185

You can always make the "we could live in some kind of matrix" argument. The real

world could have different rules. I think it doesn't make much sense to talk about unprovable things.

>>10188

Socrates was obsessed with questioning because he thought (correctly) that people of his time were operating on assumptions. If you were to tell Socrates that we can't know anything therefore every statement can be correct he would not be very impressed.

>>10148

Congradulations, OP. You've officially discovered what most of /atheism/ has known about since childhood. Most of us have long since pondered these "problems" and come to our own conclusions.

>>10148

When ever Christian say something along the lines of God is a scientific/empirical question there pretty much saying God will never manifest in any way that is detectable to our senses, so basically non existent. Well except after our deaths of course.

>If reality is ultimately unknowable than the proposition that God exists is just as valid as the proposition that God does not exist because both are propositions about the nature of reality beyond our sense impressions

>we don't know X

>which means that the veracity of X is equal to its falsity

>which means that X is 100% true

Nothing about this makes any sense whatsoever

>>9538

Eww, gross. Now I need to find your christ so I don't think fapping to chicks with dicks is great because that's everything bad about the world. I know I have plenty of christian friends that do gross things but they're not true christians, they sin. Only non-christians do gross things. I need to find something that puts rules on me because I'm so tired of all this freedom.

>>9483

the fact that I am not

ur mom

>>9483

Not being into dicks?

>>10154

Whoever made this picture is deeply confused about postmodern deconstruction. Good intro to Derrida (the main deconstruction guy) can be found in Norman Melchert's book "The Great Conversation." Very readable intro to the history of Western philosophy.

Deconstruction and Continental philosophy in general are for the most part poorly written and confusing, so I don't blame anyone for misunderstanding them.

>>10207

>Good intro to Derrida (the main deconstruction guy) can be found in Norman Melchert's book "The Great Conversation." Very readable intro to the history of Western philosophy.

Hello, edgelord.

>>10201

Everyone >justifies it differently, if at all… but it's more imporant how future possibilites are considered: why should they, what possibilites are ignored etc.

>>10217

If you keep seeing people disagree with you for similar reasons, you should probably at least try to understand their point of view, rather than assume it's one autistic motherfucker who not only tracked you to a different website, but is going to the trouble of spoofing IDs on a (probably) unfamiliar site.

>>10193

The questions I asked didn't even come up in that reply chain. What you've replied with have been nothing but dodges and changing the subject.

>>10193

The whole "it's parasitic so abortion is justified" meme is not something I've ever heard a real (vs. strawman) pro-choice person actually use to justify abortion. The reason I point out that fetuses really are parasitic is that the argument you're talking about (and making) rests on "debunking" that claim. It's a lot easier to argue facts than logic, especially with someone demonstrating incompetence with the latter.

Here are my reasons for being "pro-choice" (awful term for the position):

1. Children should have the right to not be forced into the care of people who don't want them. This alone does a huge amount of damage in the human sense (individual psychological impact and the resulting behavior toward other people) and economic sense (cost of treating psychological problems and fixing damage to other people and property). Sometimes, dead's better. And there's no better time than when your parent(s) already want you dead.

2. High birth rates are particularly a problem for poor people, who tend not to have access to education re: contraceptives and family planning or the resources to pursue adoption. Giving poor women control over whether they reproduce does wonders for reducing poverty. One, fewer people are born into poverty in the first place. Two, with fewer children to care for, already pooPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>10227

Do you think someone opposed to abortion is likely to share those values?

>>10106

Agreed with what you wrote there 100%, though that article.

>The MBTI is pretty much nonsense, sciencey snake oil. As is well-established by research, it has no more reliability and validity than a good Tarot card reading.

This is why I never take journos seriously, they don't know what they're writing about ever.

http://people.wku.edu/richard.miller/MBTI%20reliability%20validity.pdf

>In general, the MBTI and its scales yielded scores with strong internal consistency and test-retest reliability estimates, although variation was observed.

This is a very early framework and probably is missing many details and has things about it that are flat out wrong to be entirely robust, still to call it like Tarot reading is very disingenuous. But journalism is about clickbait more than anything.

>>10106

>when people stop treating it as a rough model or force employees to take the test so they can caterogize/label them, it can be harmful

Yeah, I hate this bullshit. Personality tests are alright for a laugh but taking them seriously as some kind of aptitude test is fucking stupid.

INTP-T

>>10143

hello brother

>>10147

I actually empathize with some of the positions that stormfags take, if only because it opposes the dumb fucks we call progressives and they can point out some legitimate problems. They're also more open to debate and discussion.

That said, they can really inflate the importance of otherwise petty issues, have some pretty retarded solutions for the issues that are actually of importance, and are willing to use poorly cited and ripped-from-context facts to justify their positions. And I disagree with most of their values.

>>10187

Yeah for sure. If I had to pick who I'd rather spend time discussing matters with stormfags >> SJcucks. At least stormfags allow debate. It's funny especially since SJcucks are supposedly the ones preaching tolerance.

I really hate how they took the label of progressive though. There is nothing progressive about them. They're the new conservatives in fact considering that their rainbow bullshit is the status quo. And their entire platform is based on bitching about the past and manspreading. "Back during the 1800s women were [x] that's why today we must decapitate all men who manspread."

>>10208

I can't relate to stormfags, and the concept of regression to a tribal mentality repulses me enough that I avoid their website. I have asian blood, and find their positions reprehensible. I doubt they would have more tolerance than their KKK or neonazi fathers. At least with SJWs I can laugh at their idiocy even if I can't hold a debate with them, but I despise all racists regardless of race, and not only do their views make them frightening, but in my experience you can't change any of their views. Because they're stupid enough to be racists, they will be inflexible.

>>10212

Many racists are fucking stupid, but it's not the racism that makes them stupid, it's their stupidity that draws them to racism. Like a sadist to violent video games. The games don't make him violent, the violence attracts him to it. But just like video games, racism doesn't affect any two people in the same way.

Most racists are stupid, but there is some truth to their claims. We already know that intelligence is genetic, so why do we deny the obvious truth that different racial groups have a different basal intelligence?

People will say that there is no such thing as race, but in med-school, you learn that this is just not the case. There are certain heart medication specifically designed for black people, and if you give them to white people, it can kill them. Just as you can look at a skeletal structure and determine the race from the structure of things such as the skull. Even between genders there are differences, so I never understood why people believe that there is no difference between races.

Certain racial groups have a higher chance of some illnesses, such as black people and sickle cell anemia. Some central american peoples even have a natural defense against malaria.

>I have asian blood

What kind? Korean blood is different from mongol blood, is different from japonic blood, is different from han chinese blood, is different from Indian blood. Just telling us that you're asian tells us nothing. Just like if someone told us that they were white. White what? European? Altaic? Finnic? Slavic? Caucasian?

It makes a difference, biologically and culturally.

This religion is so ancient and unique, and it deserves to be ranted about more. I feel a sense of loss that so much of its history, legends and texts have been destroyed by violence. Fire veneration in under the open sky makes so natural to me. It is such a primitive thing, a seemingly supernatural force. Perhaps fire temples were originally practical places where members of a community light a fire that had burnt out.

It says Zarathrusta was was a reformer of an older polytheistic religion who introduced the ideas of truth/good always being at war with "lie" (or evil.) It says his reforms included discouraging animal sacrifice (humans should treat cows responsibly), and discouraging the use of old rituals (focus your thoughts on worship of good instead), and discouraging intoxication by drugs. After his death people came to take up the old rituals anyway.

I read through a short and simple book titled, "Zoroastrian World Religions", and I have here an "Introduction to Zoroastrianism" by Jenny Rose which is more academic. Although I do not think I will be motivated to read through it, since to get the most of it would require time, note taking and a glossary. Even so, it's nice to see that that the sophistication of this religion and its history of interpretations can easily match that of the Abrahamic religions. I'm pretty sure an understanding of this religion is necessary to truly understand the evolution of the Abrahamic religions or religions of India. It's strong evidence of syncetism across all of those religions.

The fascinating bit is that Zoroastrianism vanished from world consciousness for nearly a thousand years until Europeans encountered the followers in the 17th century in India. It's certainly a belief every Atheist should know something about when a christian tries tries to convert them with appeals to antiquity.

>>9783

Atonism is along Zoroastrianism another interesting early pseudo-monotheism (It's not that I think that Judaism and Christianity are any more monotheistic than those. If anything, Islam would be closer to monotheism than the rest).

Both Atonism and Zoroastrianism probably predate Judaism or are at least as old as Judaism while also being more formal and established. Atonism was, during the reign of pharao Akenathon and his wife Nefertiti, the official religion of Egypt, and well Zoroastrianism was very influential in Mesopotamia, with some practitioners still alive today.

It very likely that the Semitic goat hoarders were influenced by the religions of the two empires that surrounded them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atenism

>>9815

>Zoroastrianism vanished from world consciousness for nearly a thousand years until Europeans encountered the followers in the 17th century in India.

>they still exists in India and in Iran but somehow they had disappeared

>>10132

For over a thousand years, most of what Europeans knew about Zoroastrians were from thr writings of the ancient Greeks. It was persecuted in Iran, and little was known about it, unlike Islam. Their sacred scriptures were mostly burned ans destroyed in Iran, although those that escaped to India preserved much of the core. For a long time Europeans probably believed Zoroastrians had long gone extinct, until missionaries made contact around the 17th century with Zoroastrians in India.

A couple hundred years ago a European converted to Zoroastrianism while living in India and wrote a paper on the religion, rekindling academic interest in it. Around that time the British were also using Zoroastrian Parsis because they found the ethnicity to be useful, skilled and earnest managers, and they were easier to relate to because they had no objection to drinking wine or eating meat with Europeans. A rich parsi then left India and went to Iran and petitioned the government to lift the crippling taxes on his fellow Zoroastrians, and that influence ended centuries of the worst oppression.

I did some reading on Zoroastrianism again. The passage describing a Persian court in the book of daniel is no coincidence; in Aramic the book introduces several Iranian loan words such as raj, and the metaphor about four metals representing four empires in a prophecy from the dream of nebecenezar is actually mirrored in a zoroastrian prophecy, and scholars muse over which came first. The Zoroastrian concepts of metals were possibly in turn influenced by the Greeks.

The book also claims Christian gnosticism seems to be a fusion between the Zoroastrianism cosmological struggle between good and evil, and the Greek monad. It talks about how the Dead Sea Scrolls have a document titled War Rule which describes the Jewish final battle between the angels of light and darkness, and could have been inspired by Zoroastrian religion of the time.

The book suggests that Satan began as a Zoroastrian concept, except since there was no concept for Angra Manyu the evil force, the Jews translated it as "adversary", and later it developed into "the Satan." The system of arch angels serving good and evil developed also from a Zoroastrianism sect.

I've mentioned theIntro to Zoroastrianism book I'm drawing this from before, and so far it has been a rich read. It hasn't been a difficult read either; you quickly become familiar with the terminology.

I suppose if you have read a lot of refutations by Atheists that have studied the history, read Nietzsche's "also sprach Zarathustra," or took a class in the history of Christianity at a University you might already know a lot of this. For me, knowledge of Zoroastrianism has come in spades and pieces until I decided to actually read a book that is focused on it to understand the big picture. According to it, the influence of this religion reaches accross all the major Abrahamic religions, shite Islam today, and even into the religions of India. It's exciting to think of this as a pioneer prototype for all major religions. This one religion can provide a treasure trove of answers to diverse questions, and it is truly special in how much you can learn about all religions and mysticism from reading only a little about it.