As I got at earlier, problems must be overlooked. Trying to avert those problems in the short term causes more trouble long-term. Or at the very least, being mindful of religion has no lasting advantage. This makes it irrelevant to any reasonable decision-making process.
shucks… leave it to mankind to screw up even the most worthy of belief systems. Regardless, I am with sassy. I like how one conversation developed into a completely (yet somehow the same?) topic.
:chuckle:
I don’t necessarily agree with this, but I’ll leave this behind.
I disagree completely. As I have said, religion is not always bad. Having people with different opinion is very important to any decision-making process. If you put a bunch of people with same behavior and same beliefs in a room, they will all have more or less the same ideas. The conversation rarely goes very deep in the subject.
Now, remove half of the people from that room and put others that disagree with them. Everyone in that room will start to think much harder just to prove each other wrong. Better solutions to the problems will be given.
Why do they put 12 people in a jury and not just one or two? Because, with 12 people, the probability of people disagreeing with each other is much higher. They will throw arguments at each other until all of them is convinced of one thing: whether the defendant is guilty or not.
I usually have a contempt to people saying everything needs to be homogenized in some way. Religion is one of them. Good and bad things come from people of any religion because of their religion, and also good and bad things come from atheists because of their lack of religion. Eliminating all religions from Earth is like removing a leg. Then you will have to use a cane for the rest of the eternity.
Yes, but you can live without a leg, it just may not be as enjoyable.
Its true. Thats something, right?
I couldn’t have put it better.
moderate her. 
OH the joys of seeing the repercussions of THAT eh? :lol:
Hey Medevilae, if you’re still following, any news on your situation?
raw_bean!?!? I thought I deposed of him months ago!!! Do you mean to tell me he’s still alive?
Also… wow you guys are good at going completely off-topic.
Welcome to BM forums 
Yes, actually. He just assigned the first “assignment” yesterday. I’ll get a pic of it in a second, but it goes:
(Scribbled on a ladybug notepad)
However I believe Dawkins is arguing against a god overall, and don’t feel the last question could be answered, assuming I’m putting what I believe and not what he wants to hear.
You are right, he is expecting an exact answer. In my opinion, you should frustrate his attempt by writing something showing that you know what he means, but you still disagrees with his side. It won’t work to deviate from the subject, you have to play the game in his terms.
I did not read this book, but I guess I know what he means by different types of gods. These are the bad gods:
- the one that gives money to the people who demands: there are lots of people that give lots of money to some church expecting to receive more money;
- the one that makes miracles: some people pray expecting god to cure them from some disease or give them the love of their life or some material object.
And these are the ones that he might thing as the real god:
- the one that guides people through the right way; in other words, the god that tells you what to do and punishes you if you don’t;
- the one that loves people unconditionally and suffers with so much sin in the world.
What you have to do is make he understand that he can’t change your mind. For instance, I would put those four kind of gods in a paper and criticize all of them. The first and second are easy to criticize. The third is there to take away your freedom to find out what is right and wrong. The fourth was just conceived in human’s minds to express our own unhappiness against the state of the world and is pretty much useless.
Protestants are predestination, catholics are based more on works. Your post is invalid.
Sounds to me like your Dad is a zealot and nothing you say will ever change his mind.
I confess being ignorant about all things religion. Sue me.
[EDIT] @ random person
I actually meant that to say to make you a moderator, but now I see the conversation has shifted yet again and my comments are superfluous. 
no they’re not
a few protestant approaches, like calvinism, did believe in predestination, but they also believed that the only way you could achieve the salvation you were destined to was to also achieve success in your earthly life, and since you couldn’t tell if you were one of the chosen ones predestined to salvation or not, you should always pursue your personal well-being.
catholics however believe that all humans are already destined to salvation, and their ideals largely incentive a life of submission and apathy
it’d be stupid if catholics believed in hard work while protestantism defended laziness when one of the main reasons protestantism got so popular at it’s time was to justify the ideals of the Bourgeoisie
Protestantism basically stated the existence of predestination, only Luther didn’t like dealing with uncomfortable issues (thus the creation of protestantism) and just didn’t think about it. The idea was that one would do the works anyway because they were given the grace of God.
At this point, I wouldn’t try to prove him wrong. After all that’s what got you into this mess. People of Religion are used to being proven wrong (see the earth is flat and it revolves around the sun).
The issue your father has is probably one of the idea that you are not mature/intelligent enough to make these decisions on your own.
If you want to not go to church, then you must prove this idea wrong not the idea of God(s) or religion.
Do NOT be a smart ass in your paper. DO NOT have cunning ways of bashing religion in it. DO NOT infer. In your paper treat it like an essay for school. Do not put subjective ideas or information other than what your father is asking.
Use this paper to your advantage, as a means of demonstrating you’re mature and intelligent.
If you want to further sway your father from believing you are ignorant, I would advise learning about non-christian religions. Perhaps even visit their places of worship and talk to their ministers or leaders or whatever they are called and speak to them about what their religion is about. Take the time to learn not just about the religion but what people seek out in it or why they believe it.
Lastly don’t try to prove that there is no god, don’t waste your time it will just make things worse.
Even if you don’t believe so, try to convince your dad that it is not that you directly find the idea of religion to be 100% wrong its just that you want to find what you believe for yourself and that him forcing you to go to his church is a hindrance upon this.
Really though you should take and open minded approach on religion. Although there is no direct 100% end all proof against it. Just as REAL scientist do you must take an open mind and understand that concepts that you have come to believe must be taken lightly as “facts” are always changing as new information becomes available. Don’t be a faithful atheist. Don’t just read a book and take your ideals from that, go into the world talk to people, learn scientific things about why there couldn’t be a god (not a summation in depth about specifics such as the big bang).
If you do these things I am 100% sure your dad will stop forcing you to go to church, because you will be wiser from it. Although not going to church shouldn’t be your goal it should be to become a more educated individual with a greater understanding of the people and world around them.