I understand that you think that a zygote is a human and therefore has a right to live. But here's the problem: there is no such thing as human rights except for those you are first willing to define and then defend. There are no…"
"It does seem odd to retain the Hebrew Testament alongside the Greek Testament. But religions tend to base their beliefs at least partially on previous religion and this mythical Jesus was, after all, supposed to have been a Jew and a practitioner of…"
"Good grief! I hope that guy on Answers doesn't take any vitamin C. Vinegar in salad dressing would probably light him up like a Roman candle. If acid melts everything, how do they keep it in bottles? I can't help but think that this is a…"
""entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity"
To explain something you should not bring in something even more complex. The biggest flaw in your argument will always be that you cannot explain the basic premise - where did your…"
"That's easy. Crippling religion so that those who can think can run the world. If we have intelligent people at the helm we can't help but improve things. That means promoting atheism and secularism and stonewalling efforts like the latest…"
"Like Paul, the letters of the early church fathers also were devoid of any information of Jesus the man. It wasn't until the gospels began to be written decades later that we see something of the life of this Yehoshua.
"I am pretty sure Jesus was not a real human. I've thought that for a long time, based primarily on the fact that Jesus is a very Hellenic figure and the godmen of his era were also not based upon a real person.
But currently, I'm…"
"For whatever my anecdotal evidence is worth, here it is: both my parents smoked. Both my parents developed lung cancer. My mother had the top of a lung cut off in her early fifties; my father's cancer metastasized to his liver and he died at…"
"While Noah was building his boat, the Egyptians were busily building pyramids. Funny, we still have Egyptians. The global flood was supposed to have been 4500 years ago, yet the pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara is about 4600 years old. The Egyptians…"
"I remember thinking this through many years ago - it's not a new argument, certainly.
Yes, it can be argued that there is no such thing as altruism. But I don't think that's quite true. We may be doing something good just for…"
"How you live your life does matter because it's accumulative. In the end, it won't matter, but hopefully you're a long way from the end.
So, if you spend your life learning, you will receive the benefits of knowing more and it…"
"Why do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?
Atheism has, through a long history of usage, come to mean what we are, and I'm fine with that.
In a world where there is no religion, we would be called . . .…"
"The dog's thinking, "surely she'll get out of there and feed me soon . . ."
You have to be careful anthropomorphizing animals. That said, I have a much harder time with the death of a dog than I do with the death of a…"
"I've wrestled with Hitchens' support of the Iraq war and I certainly disagree with his opinion on that subject. But I've come to some understanding of why he thinks the way he does. For one thing, he spent a lot of time in Iraq before…"
"Yes, and Ralph Nader is a crackpot.
Odd, isn't it, that the 'most-quoted intellectual' is considered dangerous? But it isn't all that unusual. All it takes among the believing crowd is an ad hominem attack to put someone off…"
"I'd like to approach the reality question from a slightly different position. We all carry around with us a mini-universe, so to speak. Our universe is built from perceptions of the real universe. But our universe is no more real than the…"