But your response doesn't go to the difference between believers like me who would never raise humanity or self to gods and atheists who do. 

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LULA POSTS:

GOAFAN77 POSTS:

No sale. surgeons can't operate and remove chemicals that are love, memory, good and evil. Maybe in Hollywood or in fantasy video games. Atheists denial of God predicated on what is known as the Naturalist worldview is filled with incoherencies and contradictions becasue of their abject inability to account for various immaterial realities was my point and that still stands.

This is an example of an an incoherence at work within Atheistim and Moral Relativism.  This is explained by asking a question. What possible meaning can "good" have in a truly Atheist world in which God does not exist? It's meaningless...you've got chaos.

As to your first statement..."Even if you believe in god, you have to make up your own mind on what you think he thinks is good and evil"....

Nope, not even close. 

How do we know what God revealed as good and evil...by practicing His religion which is the virtue by which we give to God the honor and service, worship due to Him alone as our Creator, Master and Supreme Lord.

In order to practice this virtue, we must believe all the truths revealed by God. In religion we learn what is right and what is wrong. We learn what God commands us to do.

It is by practicing God's revealed Christian religion that we fulfill the purpose that we were created....to know, love and serve Him. By believing what God has revealed, we know God. By knowing God, we cannot help but love Him. By practicing what we learn and obeying His commands, we serve Him. 

God has set His Commandments, His Moral Code before us. God sent Christ and we learn to know, love and serve God from Jesus Christ, Who teaches us through the Church He established upon St.Peter, the Catholic Church.

Christ teaches us how to know (what is good and evil), love and serve Him by establishing His religion, Christianity, the authentic Christian Faith, or Catholicism.

As to the second statement..."The Catholic church certainly doesn't agree on every single moral issue, millions of its followers clearly do not think it morally wrong to use birth control or even abortion"..

God's infallible truths are set down in the infallible Bible and in matters of faith and morals are themselves infallible doctrines held by Christ's Church. The Church infallibly teaches the Ten Commandments. She tells us infallibly what the Law means. That her members don't follow her teachings on every moral issue is not because the Church doesn't teach them, but because they for what ever reason don't want to hear the Church and obey God's laws.

Because there is no difference. There are both theists and atheists on both sides of that fence.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-2662 proposed by democratic senator John Conyers and in committee.  Versions of this same bill (drafted by the Anti Defamation League) are already on the books with some arrests and convictions in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, Ireland, Sweden, France, Italy and under Pennsylvania's ADL hate law statute in Philadelphia.

Enforcement overseas has resulted in multiple arrests of Christian pastors who were charge with being "verbally violent" towards Muslims and homosexuals and in a few cases members of the public and people visiting abortion centers.  France has been particularly litigious in this regard and Canada in recent years seems to be following suit.  Sweden has had several arrests.

The law was written to provide a means to prevent physical threat and violence against specific groups--not to outlaw speech but in each country where it's been enacted it has been broadened to cover "verbal violence" and resulted in arrests accordingly--in some cases simply for bible passages being read aloud in a public square.

Radio stations deemed to be in violation--which can and often has been quite subjective--can face fines, revocation of their licenses and imprisonment.

In the lat 1990's the Hobbs Act and RICO statutes were applied to large, organized antiabortion groups because one such group in particular was very militant and threatening in it's actions.;  The result is that several large organizations with no real, direct ties were charged along with the other organization.  it was not until after the mid 2000's that the last of these cases was overturned by the Supreme Court--after millions of dollars of damages to the organizations that had to defend themselves against laws written to enable the federal government to move quickly against mafia groups.

California and several cities within my own state of Michigan not long past have presented bills that were extremely vaguely worded and included speech as part of violence but so far these have met strong challenges and been toned down--though the intent of their sponsor's is clear in their original presentation.

You can do your own searching for more info in these areas--France in particular has been "progressive" in their enforcement--probably more so than most Western countries.

That bastion of free-thought, Russia has quite prohibitive laws on public preaching.

In regards to parental rights, you have to do a lot more research.  A sample case is Mozert v. Hawkin's County Public Schools.  Where parents and the children objected to certain literature reading assignments and courses.  In defense, supporters of the bill argued for the reasons why the state had a compelling interest to usurp parental rights and even stated wishes of the children.

Mormons and particularly Jehovah's Witnesses have face state intervention in several parental authority areas over the past decade.

I'm actually all for state examination and investigation regarding child welfare (when parents are harmful or dangerously negligent in their actions) but it is something that requires really careful consideration/

By pushing religious and anti-religious groups and persons to extremes, there is a much greater chance of person's with agendas bending laws--as in prohibiting speech to protect physical safety.  Neither religious nor non-religious persons or groups are adequately qualified to "decide" for parents in other belief systems what is goodthink and badthink--thought crimes.  Hate laws were designed to provide a swift and severe remedy to those using violence and physical abuse and intimidation--more and more, they are being stretched to include far more than that.

It would take a book to cover all this but there are plenty of both right and wrong examples out there in this issue already. A little lean or bias can easily move us towards children reporting their parents for wrong ideas and actions.

Exactly the kind of crap I wanted you to post. The bill never became law and for good reason. Because Hate Speech Laws are unconstitutional in the US and have been deemed so with precedence all the way to the Supreme Court.That is why the bill didn't pass and if it did sneak by it would have been taken off the books as soon as it started making its way through the courts.

Why even bother posting what happens in other countries? Our constitution regarding freedom of speech is different from every other nation and does not allow for pure hate speech laws.

There is very specific precedent which only allows for laws regarding hate speech when they are specifically tied to acts of violence and inciting violence which in court has the litmus test of "must be proven to be imminent" .

On February 28, 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Scheidler v. National Organization for Women. The Court's unanimous opinion held that physical violence unrelated to robbery or extortion falls outside the scope of the Hobbs Act

Sorry Charlie... Poorly argued court case....court got it right and now there is precedent. What don't you understand about how the system works?

Like I said earlier....sometimes certain things slip through the cracks however that is why we have a judicial branch. There are just as many badly crafted laws being proposed right now from the extreme right as there are from the extreme left. It is sad but when you don't look for the truth behind the issue then you become an extremist yourself and do nothing except cause yourself grief and anxiety issues while you continue the frenzy that is causing much of the anger in society today.

They sure do. Things never change. That is how Politics works. They take social issues and run them round and round accomplishing nothing in the end. In the meantime while you are so consumed by the social issues, they legislate fiscal policy which strips you of your tax dollars, putting them in the pockets of their cronies.

They were not ruled unconstitutional. The cases were poorly prosecuted and the courts got things right in the end. Big difference. This type of thing happens everyday in this country. Not really a reason to get yourself in any tizzy.

Indeed, but when isn't time a major factor? Almost every measurement out there is x over time. And while our estimates could be quite wrong, the combination of Cosmic Microwave Background, the life span of stars, which we occasionally see going super nova, and the fact that we can see galaxys millions or billions of light years tells me the universe is more than old enough for life to develop on its own. To disprove that you basically have to prove that astronomers have gotten their distance calculations wrong on everything, which is basically done by the very down to Earth math of trigonometry.

I should point out that the only thing that is ever claimed to be independent of time seems to be God. Forgive me if I happen to think there is a reason he's the odd one out.

Natural selection is the mechanic of evolution. It simply requires two more things, more time and usually isolation. In a sense, the principle of evolution can also be observed in languages. Take two groups of English speaking people, send one to the moon with no way of them communicating, and eventually they will "evolve" into different languages, as over time more words are added to one and not the other, etc. Just substitute the random changes and additions of language with mutation/natural selection, and its basically the same thing.

But destruction is sometimes creation no? As Capitalism puts it "creative destruction". If everything stays the same, nothing can be created. The old must first be destroyed, so its building blocks can be used to build something new.

Evolution is probably going on before your very eyes. The problem is if you want to see it in your life time, the things you need to watch are microscopic. Bigger organisms do evolve, but a mere century is only going to let you see a few generations.

But I AM living. I do not need to know where the atoms that make up my being originally came from to be able to enjoy life, to find purpose in this world of ours. I think we should be thrilled that our limited means and intellect has enabled us to be reasonably certain of what has happened in the last few million years on this Earth. That is more than enough background for me.

Of course, it may not be for you. I think this very nicely shows the core differences we have. Again ideology does not matter. Far more important are just how you accept three things; Time, Chance/Chaos, and Ambiguity (the problem you seem to have with purpose). I can (mostly) imagine the enormity of time, accept the influence of chaos, and remain flexible enough to deal with the ambiguity inherent in almost everything. For whatever reason it seems you do not. And really, if we do not reach agreement on these essentially simple concepts, obviously our world views will be radically different.

Maybe I was on to something here Sinperium...

It is obvious that you have not actually "read" (or maybe simply do not comprehend)the legislation so let me provide a link to what is the actual pending legislation which I assure you is only pending because politicians are doing what they do best....playing politics....during election season.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1913

Now when you realize that what some have called "special interests groups" also includes "people of all religious faiths".......

Then you will realize that this bill also helps protect people who wish to do this:

From people who wish to do things like this:

Scene of Christmas Day car-bomb explosion at St. Theresa Catholic Church

These types of crimes have happened in this country already.  For many decades. It's getting worse.

Actually now that I think of it I think Jesus fell victim to this sort of crime centuries ago.

Not really sure though ..its old news so it might just be some sort of propaganda

Much more than that.

The charges were criminal conspiracy, possession of instruments of crime, reckless endangerment of another person, riot, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and obstructing highways.

The Westboro Baptist Church still very openly,freely and frequently exercises its freedom of speech so I don't know why some are so panicked. Must be all the propaganda they expose themselves to.

Its actually "targeted" to protect all religious institutions. You still haven't read the bill?

Amazing how this:

Ends up at this:

Its not trolling. When someone claims that laws are affecting the education of children. Then incidents that happen at parades, and laws that protect everyone against violence are somehow presented to back that up then there is obviously good reason to pull out the truth-o-meter. You may not like it but if you can't back up what you claim you will be called out for it.

I don't really see how the core of your argument has anything to do with atheism. I mean do you really think people should be able to go up to other people and shriek in their face that they're evil? You don't need a new law to get arrested for that, its called disturbing the peace, and while there is a very fine line surely you don't think that such behavior should be protected. There is a big difference between coordinated antiabortion rallies (should be constitutionally protected) and random radicals pestering people at abortion centers (should not be).