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Originally Posted by filtherton
We're not wolves. Our social interactions are booty-loads more complex than the social interactions of wolves. How do you know in a particular instance that helping an individual helps the pack?
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The idea is that we came from packs not disimilar to wolves, so they work quite well to illustrate a relatable instance of how man was before theism and before the inteligence that gives birth to conscousness.
How do I know? Because the car started. It's that simple. I've helped someone, and that's good enough for me. That's atheist morality. Helping people without the threat of hell or divine retribution of some kind is the only real altruism.
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Originally Posted by filtherton
Unfounded assertions are not truth. On what basis can you claim that ethics, in any meaningful sense, predate faith? Nature isn't ethical.
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Did you miss the wolves thing? Yeesh.
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Originally Posted by filtherton
How is faith an intellectual cop out? You underestimate the amount of thought that can go into religious belief.
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There is no evidence that god exists, yet people are able to look past that and believe that he exists none the less. That's illogical. It's philosophical dependance on fiction. If I told you that Zeus exists and my proof was that I believe in him, would you convert?
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Originally Posted by filtherton
As far as descartes, leibniz and newton go, i think that if you asked them, they might have said that they were brilliant because of god, not despite their god. Regardless, their ability to reason was, i would assume, much greater than that of you or i. Whether you think them lazy or not, they're still absolute proof that theism doesn't necessarily hinder progress. How do you think dawkins feels that the work of any one of these three theists is more relevant now than he might ever be?
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I woulnd't be atheist had I been born 100 years earlier than I was. We are a product of our environment. If you are never allowed to question god, then how can you expect to break free? I was allowed to question god, and becuse of that I was eventually able to reason that god is as likely to be real as zeus.
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Originally Posted by filtherton
Is it intellectually lazy to repeatedly confuse the sins of a church with the character of all theists?
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The church, and thus religion, hinders development. The proof was in one of the men you claimed as your champion. I'll bet you $5 that if Descartes were born today, he'd be at least agnostic, if not atheist. Great mathematicians like John Horton Conway, G.H. Hardy, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Bertrand Russell, and Piergiorgio Odifreddi are all atheists.