.

[Rikiti]

.

[Rikiti]

.

[_beefcalf]

Be the captain of your own ship! Continue to be a good person. To imagine that you are unable to be a good or moral person without some authoritative security guard looking down at your every thought and every action is just silly.

Be a good person? What is a "good" person? Who are we being good for? Why would we want to be good? What is "good" without a god?

The English word God is identical with the Anglo-Saxon word for “good,” and therefore it is believed that the name God refers to the divine goodness.

Where does your desire to be "good" come from?

I am an optimist because I believe that humans can be better people when we are mature enough to accept the world as it is, not as we want it to be, and that as we accept this reality, we can be more accepting of each other, and treasure the gift of life more fully.

Treasure the "gift" of life? Who gives this gift? Where does this gift come from? The word gift insinuates that there is a giver and receiver. Did you receive the gift of life? Who did you get it from? Nature, evolution, deity?

How does one claim to be atheist and yet talk of being good and treasuring the gift of life? Maybe your not as atheist as you think? hmmm

GR33N,

Thanks for your post...

Assigning a significance to the cognates 'good' and 'God' makes a pretty weak argument for the existence of God, I'd have to say. (Perhaps we should explore the ramifications of the name "Lucifer" and see where that leads us. Satan is the bringer of light and knowledge!?!?)

Your implicit argument that one must be good "for" someone else is baseless. The cause of my desire to be good is extremely simple. It goes like this: If I do somebody wrong, treat them unfairly, or act in a dishonest manner, I feel bad because I know that they will then think less of me. I have an innate desire to be liked and respected by my fellow humans. To take actions which diminish other's opinion of me is intensely uncomfortable and unpleasant. I have a built-in moral compass which pushes me and guides me to be 'Good'. It is not directed or calibrated by religious indoctrination.

'The gift of life' is a common phrase, and, yes, is almost certainly derived from the concept that our life ultimately sprang from a supernatural creator. Religion has imprinted upon our language, our culture, our art, the remnants of that belief. I can assure you that my willingness to use such phrases, and to revel in the beauty of the stained glass of Notre Dame, or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or to enjoy Handel's Messiah, does not then obligate me to lend credence to the myths from which these great masterpieces sprang.

When I wish my Spanish speaking friends 'adios' at the end of the day, I am not obligating myself to the idea that they should go "to God" or "with God".

Your reply gives me the vague feeling that you think you've seen through my thin facade and glimpsed the true believer within. I can assure you that this is most likely just another symptom of your apparent willingness to believe something for which there exists absolutely no evidence. A trait that I think you, and all humans, would be better off without.

[_Analytics]

Do religious people ever wonder about the reality of nature?

What if God is nature?

That is how I view God anyway.

Are you suggesting atheists don't believe in nature???

[_Some Schmo]

One of the roles that myth contributes to society is circumstantial evidence of the "super" natural in the form of consistent similar cross cultural beliefs in it. If myth is a description of reality, and we have all these concepts such as spirits, gods, demons, as well as many moral and philosophical similarities, then what does that mean? What is the core truth that formed these myths in the first place? A fish story has to start somewhere. So what if the fish wasn't the biggest in the lake and didn't break the net lifting it into the boat, that doesn't negate the fact that there was indeed a fish caught (though it be much more reasonable in size).

Dude, seriously?

Take the tortoise and the hare. That can be considered a myth that has truth value (patient methodical progress often saves time in the long run). Do you really believe that at some point, a turtle and a rabbit had a race? Is it not possible to express some of the axiomatic aspects of life using complete fiction?

You seem to be confused about what the truth value is in a myth. It's not that it these things actually happened in some non-exaggerated way; it's that they teach a lesson about life.

[_Mad Viking]

How did you make the determination that "chi" is not humans simply conflating their internally generated feelings into something external or supernatural?

Trial and error. Consistency. Third party objective verification from other psychics of shared internal experiences.

It appears that you are using what is commonly known as the scientific method to evaluate the validity of these experiences. I thought that you said that science couldn't do that.

Let's put that aside for a moment: What is it that is consistently obsevered and that is verified by third party psychics?

Do you think that having these experiences "verified" by other individuals who are predisposed to interpret them in a very specific way allows you to explore all avenues of interpretation and explanation?

How do you determine what you are seeing with your eyes is really there?

The same way you do.