“It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to MAKE so many. Jim said the moon could a LAID them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they’d got spoiled and was hove out of the nest” (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 19).

Today more and more scientists are coming to the conclusion that it did not “just happen” but instead it was made by God. Alan Sandage, the winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy, wrote that “I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing” (Willford, J.N., March 12, 1991, “Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest,” New York Times, p. B9).

Professor Antony Flew, age 81, has been a legendary proponent and debater ‘for’ atheism for decades but now says that “the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.” In a recent interview, Flew stated, “It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.” Flew also renounced naturalistic theories of evolution:

“It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.”

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/flew.html

It seems to me that it takes a much larger leap of faith to believe that the universe “just happened” than it does to believe that God created it.

We’ll be talking about why and whether church and state should be separate with film maker Scott Burdick as our special guest.

Call in at 8pm Tomorrow (sunday) night to ask questions, give opinion or just shout back the tide at (424) 243-9589.

You can find our show page at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/reasonpodcast/2012/01/30/reason-podcast or at our jump-site wnyatheist.org

Believers are constantly saying impossible things of God. They make many definitive statement of God’s attribute while claiming that he is unfathomable, unknowable, immutable and works in mysterious ways.  These are clear contradictions and un-provable truths that no judge could or would accept. Yet believers think the atheist should just swallow these lies whole. And when atheists do not, believers get into their condescending mode; treat the non-believer like a child; while it is believers themselves who are action in a non-adult way,——led by fantasy,———- when atheists will just not accept something unproven as truth.

Whenever the discussions of God get into explaining his irrational, immoral or strange attributes, believers deny it through evasion. They do so by hiding behind some evasive statement or other. These include silly irrational or unknowable adjectives and phrases like; God works in mysterious ways; God can do whatever he wants; God owns us; God does not have to follow his laws because they are for man and not himself; God’s action may look immoral but it is because he knows so much more than we do. Discussion end with the believer chanting one of these mantras of self-deception. Almost like a parent telling his child that it is that way because it is that way and expecting the child to accept this condescending statement and evasive lie. Believers are not honest enough to just say, I don’t know.

Anyone with experience in debated with believers expects these yet they are not applicable or relevant to moral issues. Regardless, believers use them to justify God’s immoral action and to explain away attributes that are impossible to apply to God.

God is not corporeal. He is immaterial. He cannot reproduce true. He cannot have sex. He cannot know the effects on our psyches from chemical reactions that trigger human sexual activity and desire.

Knowing this, any moral person will know that God should not dictate to man how to handle sexual matters. God cannot know what the feelings and emotions are that drive sex in man and thus it is immoral for him to demand that we do as he wishes. Because of this, he also has no right to punish man for ignoring his unlearned dictates of issues that he himself cannot possibly fathom.

There are likely many things that God cannot know. I have chosen three that I think are obvious. Carnal love, reproduction and the emotions and physical feelings that go with sex.

Do you agree?

Regards
DL

Charles Darwin also wrote that “a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal” (Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, Part 3, Chapter 21).

According to this a man is by nature religious. How can this be explained?

Deborah Feldman’s ‘Unorthodox’ Chronicles Years of Shocking Repression in Hasidic Jewish Life

By Cavan Sieczkowski
February 8, 2012
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/295113/20120208/deborah-feldman-unorthodox-hasidic-jew-book.htm

Deborah Feldman had finally had enough. After 23 years of living in what she describes as an oppressive and insular community, she abandoned her Hasidic Jewish sect for a life of freedom.

Deborah Feldman chronicles a life of strangling repression in a New York Orthodox Jewish household in her new book, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” out Feb. 14. Her book delves into her past struggles, including sexual assault, an arranged marriage and a divorce. . . .

Now 25-years-old, Feldman turned her back on the Satmars in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood just two years ago, emboldened by classes she took at Sarah Lawrence College where she read enlightening books like “Pride and Prejudice” and “Little Women.” The books opened her eyes to a world that could be.

Some might be surprised to hear that Deborah Feldman grew up in such a progressive city as New York, but the enclave has rules of its own. “They’ve passed more laws from out of nowhere, limiting women-there’s a rule that women can’t be on the street after a certain hour,” Feldman told The New York Post. “We all hear these stories about Muslim extremists; how is this any better? This is just another example of extreme fundamentalism.” . . .

There are many instances in scriptures where God does not follow the golden rule.

Ezekiel 18:20
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

In the sacrifice of Jesus, God demanded that Jesus bear the sins of the wicked who will repent.

This is hardly doing unto others or following the advice of scriptures.
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Matthew 25:41 (Jesus speaking): Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Romans 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Hell can hardly be called a good thing. This again is hardly Jesus doing unto others or following the advice of scriptures.
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Does the God you know follow the golden rule?

How can he be doing so when a good God would find a good and moral way to convert instead the draconian methods he seems to use that go against the golden rule and his own good advice in his scriptures?

Regards
DL

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/02/08/pascals-roulette/

Atheism in America (Financial Times)

Student Faces Town’s Wrath in Protest Against a Prayer

By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: January 26, 2012

CRANSTON, R.I. — She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion. In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion.

State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica “an evil little thing” on a popular talk radio show. Three separate florists refused to deliver her roses sent from a national atheist group. ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16859421