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Topic: The Atheist Challenge - Credit goes to Brett Keane (Read 920 times) |
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Bass
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The Atheist Challenge - Credit goes to Brett Keane
« on: 2006-12-29 08:28:35 » |
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Here is an interesting thing I came across on Youtube by Brett Keane, I found it fun and interesting. It asks you to answear 12 questions about Atheism, mostly moral dillemas and what if a god existed. Here is the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kUTU_vA4uE
I must say though that the guy here sounds like a theist undercover...don't know why I think that...
Please post detailed answears here.
Here are my answears for it.
1. Yes because if god was real I could look forward to heaven and all the other promises they make.
2. No, because if there was a god not even he/she/it would have any right to that kind of absolute power. If he made us it wouldn't be a good excuse to undying loyalty. Just because my Mum made me dosn't mean I am obligated to do everything she demands. Of course I may be forced to under the durest of torture or scare tactics. I imagine the real god would not be very nice, sounds like Hitler was the son of god if anyone.
3. The 5 year old child, because it hasn't gotten to have a full and fruitful life yet. Everyone deserves to live because we all do so only once and since there is no afterlife and reincarnation, there is no bigger tragedy then when someone under the age of 5 dies.
4. For him to open up the clouds and say I am god. As long as no trick of light and mirror is involved, which I would check for, seeing will be beleiving for me. However I still doubt I would agree with this god, it's just an evil manipulative thing that probably thinks we are some funny reality T.V. show and enjoys watching people die in pointless wars his existance and the mystery he allows to shroud him causes.
5. Didn't know what the word meant so I looked it up. I would say on occasion, although I do not particulary do it often, just when I am genuinely concerned about someone, a freind, family member, whoever. Of course It could have been my just selfishly not wanting to lose that person in my life. I saw a girls horrible anarexia story on a doco and I touched me enough that I wanted to research her to see if she had a happy ending, but I never found anything. Again I probably just like the emotional effect the story was having on me and wanted more. I beleive we are always selfish and there is no such thing as a selfless motive, no matter what. Read this from a reliable source about social psychology. We can something do things because we beleive in karma or a god or whatever. But we never do things selflessly.
6. Absolutely, in fact I recently found out that it could be posible in 30 years time when they invent the ability to tranfer our brain into machines, which would effectively make us immortal. I would pay a high price for this as well. I mean whatever price you pay, you would have eternity to pay it off, or make up for it.
7. Wow, To be entirely honest I would choose to live, because I'm selfish and everybody is, but It would be immoral to give anyone a choice like that and evil.
8. The Devil, because he dosn't ask me to do anything and seems to pretty much leave people to thier business. Whereas the Cristain God, would have me kissing his feet for hours a day and I would have a depressing life, following such a Totalitarian. I actually beleive that if Christianity is real, then it would be god that's evil. Don't know of many other gods in much detail.
9. Without Doubt, Hypocracy seems to be a huge problem in most religions I see, this is why I can't beleive they are the good gods.
10. No but I hate the people who started the whole thing, the people who beleive in it now are only victims. I do tend to come close to hating people who try to convert however.
11. Mostly, I think it is imposible to entirely sit on the fence, they'd have to lean slightly towards one way or another. But I think they could be congratulated for realising there is more to life then arguing about religion all the time. At least they are not the ones starting wars.
12. No instead I would take him, put him into another foster family somewhere else in the world, that would raise him entirely differently and then I beleive he would become a different person.
Can't really be bothered with the bonus question, but I beleive he probably did exist, but that his miracles were just magicians magic tricks and he was just so nice to people that people started saying he was the masier, or however it's spelt. Anyone seen life of Brian, that pretty much what I mean.
Nice challenge, and your questions were not stupid they were fun, it's obvious that some people get headaches if they have to try and think that hard.
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Perplextus
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Re:The Atheist Challenge - Credit goes to Brett Keane
« Reply #1 on: 2007-01-03 05:57:56 » |
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The questions:
1. Would you prefer that there be a God?
2. If the existence of a God were to be proven, and it required service and worship, would you do anything it demanded?
3. Who do you think has the more valuable life? A 5 year-old or a 50 year-old?
4. What would it take for you to be a believer?
5. Have you ever done anything that could be defined as "altruistic"?
6. If science were to come up with an immortality pill, would you take it?
7. If hell existed, and you had to choose between yourself burning for eternity or a 2 year old child, which would you choose?
8. If I had to follow a man-made god, which would you choose?
9. Should a God be held to its own principles?
10. Do you hate God or anyone who believes in it?
11. Do you think agnostics are honest in their professed views on God?
12. If you could go back in time and kill baby Hitler in his crib, would you?
Bonus:
13. Can you prove that a historical man named Jesus existed?
My responses:
1. No. Not at all. Not even if I got to be that God.
2. I'd be a fool not to follow the demands of a creature that could condemn me to eternal suffering. But it would only be fear that would cause me to do so, unless its demands were consistent with my own ethical intuitions and motivations.
3. Life is not something to which the notion of "value" is properly ascribed, so far as I can see. I am unfamiliar with a concept of value that relates neither to exchange nor use. Therefore I find this question unanswerable.
4. God itself would have to alter my consciousness against my will and make me believe; I can think of no physical or phenomenological evidence that would be sufficient to erase my skepticism. Anything sufficiently "fantastic" that defied all other explanations, I would probably take simply as evidence that my sanity had deserted me.
5. It is possible, but not deliberately. Any actions I have undertaken which are deliberately helpful have always given me satisfaction, so might not be truly altruistic. Perhaps however I have unknowingly helped someone in need by inadvertantly sacrificing something to which I was emotionally attached, though I'm not sure if that really counts as altruism either.
6. No. Except perhaps on my death bed, if I were gripped with sufficient fear...it's hard to anticpate how that situation might affect me. Generally speaking, I find that the impermanence of life is what gives life its beauty and meaning...it is certainly what drives me to define and pursue goals.
7. I would choose the child. While I would feel guilty for as long as I remained conscious, no amount of guilt would be worse than eternal physical suffering.
8. Why, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, of course! Or else Eris, goddess of Discord.
9. In so far as they applied to It, yes.
10. I cannot hate what does not exist. Nor do I hate those who follow a non-existent entity. I pity them, and I fear them, and I fear what will become of our species and our planet in their hands, and if I had no other option I would slay them to save our species and our planet...but I do not hate them.
11. It is impossible to give an answer to such a general question. Like any sufficiently large group of people, I'm sure they are subject to a range of honesty.
12. I'm going to ignore the paradoxes of time-travel and take this question as a purely ethical one, rewording it as follows: "If by killing a single child you could save the lives of millions, would you?" I certainly would.
13. I do not have sufficient knowledge to answer this.
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Praise Bob!
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Perplextus
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Re:The Atheist Challenge - Credit goes to Brett Keane
« Reply #3 on: 2007-01-06 14:04:25 » |
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Quote:
One answer to this can be found in my story Revelation. What would you do if the story was true? |
Neat story. But it wouldn't make much of a believer out of me. I'll comment more fully on the original thread as to why. I could accept that story as evidence for a super-intelligence, but for a being that I would call "God"? Not hardly. I still maintain that the only evidence that would "make a believer" out of me is if God actually entered my consciousness and made me believe. For any other evidence, I maintain that there would be simpler explanations.
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Praise Bob!
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