AgnosticBob AtheistPants Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 I am SO glad this site exists and all of you are here on it. After spending a lot of my days arguing with morons that spout shit like the following, it's a much needed respite to be able to come here and see that there ARE people who USE that lump of gray matter between their ears! DV Here, Chris you give objective, repeatable and consistent evidence that you are not part of our brotherhood of believers who know the Holy Spirit of the God who created all nature. Those brothers dwell together in the unity of that Holy Spirit. You can not prove that our Holy Spirit and God does not exist. You and Jim and the others go on in your mind, will and emotion (soul) ranting that He is not! There are three pieces of evidence you admit. They are the creation or world, the church and the experience of humans as related out of their mouths. We do not share your world, your lack of brotherhood experience or the words out of your mouth. You rant on calling our church a religion which is just repeating your shallow, dead experience of no spiritual life. What you prove is that you are spiritually dead and speak with no revelation, love, joy or peace as we know it. We all agree on that. Your claim that what you do not know and experience does not exist is a dangerous way to travel and your scenario as Jim calls it is a dead end. You are like ignorant persons claiming that because you do not know it, germs do not exist. You see no point to washing hands or avoiding intimate contact with HIV infected persons who may claim to be brothers or sisters and press you for such contact. You do not know and therefore can not get tuberculosis or tetanus. Like I said it is a DEAD END. Shalom, DV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lerato Posted July 28, 2007 Share Posted July 28, 2007 Hey ABAP - What is the background for your quote? Is this something someone you know sent to you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-COG Posted July 28, 2007 Share Posted July 28, 2007 Whoever DV is, I don't think he deserves a response, other than to say the burden of proof for God is on him, the believer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirangel Posted July 28, 2007 Share Posted July 28, 2007 Hey ABAP - What is the background for your quote? Is this something someone you know sent to you? I'm curious too. Can we get little background info? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AgnosticBob AtheistPants Posted July 29, 2007 Author Share Posted July 29, 2007 Hey ABAP - What is the background for your quote? Is this something someone you know sent to you? I'm curious too. Can we get little background info? Sure. This is an email from a man by the name of David Vause. He is a doctor (a surgeon of some sort) and I believe he is now in about his 70's. I am currently involved in an email exchange with him, his wife Maryella, another semi-Christian by the name of Dick Williams and three or four atheists. One of the atheists (well, I call him an atheist, but he calls himself an agnostic) is Bill Henness. He hangs around here some but I don't know how much he actually posts. All of the participants aside from myself are over 60 years of age. Anyway, Bill got me involved in this email exchange by forwarding an email from Maryella which derided the site whydoesgodhatesamputees.com. She had asked that her response be forwarded to some of Bill's atheist friends. I replied to her and the rest has been a bang-my-head-against-the-wall affair ever since. Primarily the only Christian responders are Maryella and Dick. Maryella is a bumper sticker theologian, replying with one-liners out the ass. Dick is the enraged Christian (if you can call him that with his unorthodox theology) who rants and raves that atheists must provide proof that god does not exist because we are making that assertion. He seems to believe that just because man has believed in the supernatural for thousands of years, that makes the supernatural a de facto truth. When David replies, he is generally another of the enraged variety who enjoys insulting and demeaning his opponents by pointing out just how intelligent he is and how stupid everyone who disagrees with him must be. With regard to the email quoted from him, the background is as follows. Evidence for or "proof" of the existence of any god or gods is a constant theme in this exchange. One of the atheist contributors made a statement suggesting that there is no proof for the existence of any god. Maryella, Dave's wife, replied with the following: All nature and much human experience "proves" it and there is NO evidence to the {sic} disprove it!!! Yours for life, Maryella <>< Jesus is the love we share ><> Tree of Life: http://www.moment.net/~maryella Juice Plus+ https://www.juiceplus.com/road/+mv89517 4 Spirit, Soul, & Body: http://www.4-spirit-soul-body.com/ To which I responded: You obviously have no idea what "proof" is. It IS NOT subjective opinion. It IS objective, repeatable and consistent evidence. From there, we get Dave's reply quoted in the OP. He's full of ripe juicy Christian nonsense like that. My answer to that email was this: Thank humanity for that! I'm so glad I'm no longer a "part of your brotherhood." It's the last place I ever want to be again. Look Doc, YOU believe in this myth of a god who is triune, killed his son to save mankind and has a spirit to communicate with you, not me. YOU make the positive assertion that a God exists, not me. You claim it's truth and you claim everyone needs to know your god. The burden therefore is on YOU to prove the existence of this deity. I don't NEED to prove that any god, much less its "holy spirit" does not exist. It's done a good enough job of that itself. I say simply, "God? What god? I don't see any god." There's no rant to it. You want to believe it's ranting because you aren't paying the slightest bit of attention to what I say. You lump me into your preconceived notion of an atheist, automatically rule out the possibility that I have ever experienced what you have, and shut your eyes and ears to everything I or anyone like me could show you. To be fair though, while I do read your offerings, I have my own preconceived notions about you and the others in the choir here. The only one who has shown any sign of not being precisely what I think them to be is Dick. Of course, he has his own theology that is most definitely not mainstream Christianity. You and Maryella aren't mainstream either, but you're definitely Christian. As usual, Doc, you assume far more than you know. I have more peace, love and joy now than I ever did as a Christian. My only sorrow now is that my children are having to grow up in that cesspool of hatred known as the "love of Christ". I was surrounded by people with major superiority complexes like you for all of my Christian life. My ex-wife was one of them and it makes me sick that I didn't see it until it was too late. It was all disguised by a thin veneer of sweetness and false love and charity. I'd give examples, but they'd be wasted words so I won't bother. Let's just say that the Christian quip "I'm not perfect, just forgiven" is a farce of what you people REALLY believe. Beat the hell out of that straw man Doc! I have never stated that everything I have not experienced or do not know does not exist. What I have said is that experiences that cannot be tested, repeated and shown to be true are highly suspect of not being true. If someone told you that tiny flying pink elephants were the reason you sneeze, would you simply accept that tiny pink elephants tickled your nose hairs and made you sneeze? Or would you think "That's a pretty silly idea. Let me look into this and see what the real reason for sneezing is"? I certainly hope the latter. However, when it comes to questions like "How did the world get here" and "What happens when we die", you're quite willing to accept an ancient myth rather than to continue searching for actual answers. I honestly don't understand how an intelligent person like yourself can do that. The answers beyond what we currently know may never be found and we admittedly know next to nothing(KNOW, not BELIEVE). That's no reason to accept a fairy tale as truth. I also say that accepting fairy tales to explain the unknown rather than simply accepting that we don't understand is far more dangerous than my line of reasoning. We have not come this far by accepting the current beliefs about the world around us as truth. We advance only by challenging existing theories and testing and trying them to see if they hold up under the intense scrutiny of science and the light of any newly discovered facts (or any older yet previously overlooked facts). Religion doesn't allow for this. Religion stands firmly in one place and clings tenaciously to its antiquated ideologies. An appropriate example was offered by Sam Harris in The End of Faith. Bring a scholar from the 14th century to the modern day and he would be lost in the arenas of science, but he would be an absolute expert in religion. Religion is a dead weight around the neck of humanity. It holds us back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ nivek ♦ Posted July 30, 2007 Share Posted July 30, 2007 Bob, In return it is we who help the Boss run this little spot on the IntarWebbNutT that are very thankful for the assorted nuts, fruits, fruitcakes, persons, and assorted farm animals, aliens, and then plain oddballs that read, post, frequent Ex-christian dot net. Without you folks, this spot would be just another lonely little ill-used resource waiting to be filled with data entry or something lurid... ExC is a vibrant community due to you and the myriad of people who care to come and partake in what is our life on.line, on.ass right.here. That my friend, overall is something to be thankful for. ExC is what we make it. ExC continues to be what the users drive it to be. ExC exists in part due to the need of something like it being where it is. kL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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