The Atheism Thread - Part 5

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If you think a strong argument can't be made from morality, and only from science, then you got serious problems.

I.e. eating animals period, is not a moral act. Especially intelligent ones. Slaughterhouses are just adding insult to injury.

Take pigs. They're smarter than dogs. Yet we eat them. But most of us here (barring certain cultures), would be sickened by the prospect of eating a dog. Because we arbitrarily classify dogs as a special class of animals.

What about free ranges that (supposedly?) treat livestock more humanely? Any thoughts on the ethos of those?

It's certainly a welcome improvement.
 
Eating at all is not a moral act. It's great evidence against the existence of a loving god, in fact.

Let's please not forget that plants are living creatures and that we are, in fact, genetically connected to plants. So even though plants may not be conscious as we think of it (no brains or immuno-defense systems or such), you are still partaking in the killing of life when you eat plants.

Yet we still have to survive. And eating is kinda required for that.

Again, the morality argument is a great argument for being picky if you eat meat. But for bucking the very diet we evolved to need to survive? Yeah... you're going to need a ton of science behind you for that.
 
...Not trying to make an argument from science. Though I suppose you could make a psychological one (i.e. you can tell a lot about a culture based on its animal cruelty laws, or lack thereof).

Plants are living things, but very different from say, mammals. Even most ethical vegetarians discriminate between eating say fish (not particularly intelligent) and eating relatively intelligent mammals (pigs, horses, etc).

Getting way off subject, and don't want to start a "Vegetarianism: Love it or Leave it" thread. I just wanted to make the point that there is a strong moral / ethical argument to be made against eating intelligent animals.

We did all kinds of things we would never do now to get where we are today.
 
If you think a strong argument can't be made from morality, and only from science, then you got serious problems.

I.e. eating animals period, is not a moral act. Especially intelligent ones. Slaughterhouses are just adding insult to injury.

Take pigs. They're smarter than dogs. Yet we eat them. But most of us here (barring certain cultures), would be sickened by the prospect of eating a dog. Because we arbitrarily classify dogs as a special class of animals.



It's certainly a welcome improvement.

eating predators isn't good for you.

in our culture rabbits have been both pet and food. so i think that it's not a case of special privilege .
 
Rabbits being pets is a relatively new concept. Horses are kind of an odd one. There's some stigma to eating them, but they're considered work animals, not family animals.

Dogs and cats have been pets for more than a thousand years. In many countries, eating them is illegal.

Of course in some cultures, dogs are viewed as pests and / or food, but that's a different story. To some cultures eating cows is considered reprehensible.

The point is, our standards are rather arbitrary.

Eating one animal is horrific, while eating another one is perfectly acceptable, even though they are close in intelligence.
 
...Not trying to make an argument from science. Though I suppose you could make a psychological one (i.e. you can tell a lot about a culture based on its animal cruelty laws, or lack thereof).

Plants are living things, but very different from say, mammals. Even most ethical vegetarians discriminate between eating say fish (not particularly intelligent) and eating relatively intelligent mammals (pigs, horses, etc).

Getting way off subject, and don't want to start a "Vegetarianism: Love it or Leave it" thread. I just wanted to make the point that there is a strong moral / ethical argument to be made against eating intelligent animals.

We did all kinds of things we would never do now to get where we are today.
The reason that the so-called "moral" argument doesn't hold the weight that the ecological argument does is that it is far more subjective and suffers from severe problems when explored in any depth.

In other words, you're missing the point I made originally.
 
First of all I don't want you guys to think i'm pushing religion on you, but I do have a question for all the athiests and theist on here. How do you explain all the Near Death Experiences where people have gone to heaven or have seen hell?

Howard Storm, Bill Weiss and Mary Baxter are just a few that have told us what happens after we die.
 
The reason that the so-called "moral" argument doesn't hold the weight that the ecological argument does is that it is far more subjective and suffers from severe problems when explored in any depth.

In other words, you're missing the point I made originally.

Weight in what sense?
 
First of all I don't want you guys to think i'm pushing religion on you, but I do have a question for all the athiests and theist on here. How do you explain all the Near Death Experiences where people have gone to heaven or have seen hell?

Howard Storm, Bill Weiss and Mary Baxter are just a few that have told us what happens after we die.

I don't know if you've read many accounts, but you'll notice that people who see the Christian concepts of "heaven" and "hell" in their so-called near death experiences, are usually themselves of Christian backgrounds.
 
First of all I don't want you guys to think i'm pushing religion on you, but I do have a question for all the athiests and theist on here. How do you explain all the Near Death Experiences where people have gone to heaven or have seen hell?

Howard Storm, Bill Weiss and Mary Baxter are just a few that have told us what happens after we die.

The brain is a funny thing. I sometimes dream the weirdest stuff.
 
Has a habit of drugging itself to deal with extreme circumstances as well. and they don't know anything of an afterlife because if they were completely dead then they'd still be dead.
 
First of all I don't want you guys to think i'm pushing religion on you, but I do have a question for all the athiests and theist on here. How do you explain all the Near Death Experiences where people have gone to heaven or have seen hell?

Howard Storm, Bill Weiss and Mary Baxter are just a few that have told us what happens after we die.


Brain going crazy in final seconds or under duress. Is there a afterlife? Um...reincarnation, purgatory, maybe a place in-between death and reincarnation...is what I general believe. In terms of pugatory, think River-world tv movie for SyFy. I guess. At least that is what I think of or imagine is there after death.
 
First of all I don't want you guys to think i'm pushing religion on you, but I do have a question for all the athiests and theist on here. How do you explain all the Near Death Experiences where people have gone to heaven or have seen hell?

Howard Storm, Bill Weiss and Mary Baxter are just a few that have told us what happens after we die.
As Thundercrack has mentioned, you'll tend to notice that people of different religions will usually see and describe places and scenarios that line up with what their religions describe.

There do tend to be some commonalities, however. The "bright white light" being one prime example, along with so-called "out of body" experiences. These can be explained - at least partially - by the brain drugging itself with DMT.
 
First of all I don't want you guys to think i'm pushing religion on you, but I do have a question for all the athiests and theist on here. How do you explain all the Near Death Experiences where people have gone to heaven or have seen hell?

Howard Storm, Bill Weiss and Mary Baxter are just a few that have told us what happens after we die.

Did they really go to/see heaven/hell? Or are they confusing an experience for heaven/hell? Or are they making it all up?

Anyone can tell you what happens after we die. Proving they're right is a whole other matter.
 
Out of the three I mentioned I would say Howard Storm is the most believable and he was an atheist before he went through his experience.

I've researched many different NDE and there are people from Africa, China, and Muslim countries that have described the Christian Heaven and Hell.
 
Out of the three I mentioned I would say Howard Storm is the most believable and he was an atheist before he went through his experience.


I've researched many different NDE and there are people from Africa, China, and Muslim countries that have described the Christian Heaven and Hell.
Because, as we all know, Christians don't inhabit those countries, nor do people who have been exposed to Christian concepts of heaven and hell.
 
Out of the three I mentioned I would say Howard Storm is the most believable and he was an atheist before he went through his experience.

I've researched many different NDE and there are people from Africa, China, and Muslim countries that have described the Christian Heaven and Hell.

He was an atheist from a Christian background. You'll find that people of different religions, see different figures in their "NDE". At least, that's what I noticed.

I'v read Howard Storm's account. Atheists do not say "Jesus, please save me!"
 
He was an atheist from a Christian background. You'll find that people of different religions, see different figures in their "NDE". At least, that's what I noticed.

I'v read Howard Storm's account. Atheists do not say "Jesus, please save me!"

How do you know an atheist wouldn't ask Jesus to save them if they thought they were on there way to hell? If someone is totured then they would probably say anything to make the pain stop.
 
Out of the three I mentioned I would say Howard Storm is the most believable and he was an atheist before he went through his experience.

I've researched many different NDE and there are people from Africa, China, and Muslim countries that have described the Christian Heaven and Hell.

I'm sure their descriptions are vague enough to apply to any afterlife archetype. Whatever NDE are, they're probably some kind of dream-state or just pure baloney.
 
Eh...

Anyone read that book this little kid wrote on his experience? Near death or whatever it was...
 
How do you know an atheist wouldn't ask Jesus to save them if they thought they were on there way to hell? If someone is totured then they would probably say anything to make the pain stop.

Well, for one thing it would be pointless, since by definition, atheists don't believe in Jesus' divinity. Many don't even believe he existed as a man, much less as a god.

Why would you ask for someone you don't believe in to help you?
 
I'm sure their descriptions are vague enough to apply to any afterlife archetype. Whatever NDE are, they're probably some kind of dream-state or just pure baloney.

I do believe a lot of these people are sincere, but the cultural bias is rather obvious, and a giveaway that it's psychological.
 
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