WooHoo! More idiots running the gub'ment.

You have, in fact, implied one of athiesm's values, Huntard, which is that they don't believe in the Biblical god. Their values run counter to some of the major Biblical values. Implied in this is what I aluded to before; that athiests value the fact that they don't consider themselves accountable for sin, righteousness or judgement after death.The reason I thank God that I am not an athiest has nothing to do with whether atheists are what I consider moral or immoral. I have a number of athiest friends and people I interact with who are, in fact better people than some professing Christians who I know. Imo, it is not necessarily athiestic values which made these good folks moral. It likely had a lot to do with their up-bringng and enironment, education, etc, none of which are athestic values perse.I thank God that I am not an athiest, primarily because I believe I will be held accountable forever relative to sin, righteousness and judgement and the need to have a savior/advocate/redeemer so as to be able to stand before Jehovah and his christ/messiah Jesus who is Biblically depicted as lord/master of all humans.I also regard the values of all Biblical princples to be of great benefit to society and cultures, the USA being so blessed over the past due to these values as compared to other nations of different cultures, especially what I consider as athiestic cultures such as the Communist block nations who have consistently been brutal and oppressive to their citizens as history attests.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

What values would those be Buz?

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It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds
soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

That's a value? Not believing a particualr claim? Like? Again, not believing in something is a value? {ABE}: Also, like I said before, I feel responsible towards my fellow humans. You know, the ones that actually have to live with the decisions I make? It's to them I am responsible. And this is reason enough for me to behave.{/ABE} So far, you have only named one "value", which I don't think actually is a value. What are these others? Like beating slaves to an inch of their lives? Indeed, they beat a lot of slaves, didn't they. As was the spanish inquisition, a decidedly non-atheist bunch. Also, I don't think anybody is dreading living in, say, Sweden, or even my country, who are certainly not christian. ----But, I notice you didn't answer my very simple question, so here it is again: Do you or do you not know what values atheists hold?A simple yes or no will do. And an explanation of the answer, please. If yes, please tell me what they are. If no, then why bring them up?Edited by Huntard, : Added {ABE} bit

There is no declared atheist value. The values the average atheist would ascribe to would most likely be culturally influenced and based around altruism, like it is with most people.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

"Biblical principles" have throughout history have demonstrated to be easily manipulated in to aberrant forms of oppression. The Dark Ages were dark for a reason. Aside from rampant disease, the Church Age was one of the most repressive forms of society this world has ever known, all of which was accomplished in the name of Christ.You have to take the good with the bad. Whatever good things have come about from Christianity, others have been tragic and we can't just sweep those under the carpet.I could find good things about Soviet anti-religious regimes, but it doesn't overshadow what crimes were perpetrated under it. I feel the same applies.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Buz, I'm sure you've grown tired of hearing this, but it's true: this is purely circular reasoning.What you're really saying here is that you're grateful to be a Christian because you're a Christian. Christianity is valuable to you because you're judging it by values that are strictly Christian. It's like a Muslim saying that he's glad the he's a Muslim because Allah is the one true god. Well, he wouldn't say that Allah is the one true god unless he were a Muslim in the first place, would he? Do you get it? It's like saying that the Miami Dolphins are a better team than the New York Yankees because they score a lot more touchdowns.*By the way, you haven't actually told us what your Christian values are. Can you name any values you hold that an atheist could not, other than those that simply establish that you are, in fact, a Christian, but have no meaning outside of that? Can you name any moral value that you hold - such as showing forgiveness to others, respecting one's elders, not killing people whenever you feel like it - that an atheist could not?Having a relationship with Christ isn't a value, it's simply a belief. It's a belief that can encourage the cultivation of certain values, but it's not a value in itself. I hope that you can see the distinction. Ah yes, there you go. You already made your point for me.For the record, Buz, I actually respect you quite a bit. I apologize for times when I've been disrespectful in my replies to you. It's difficult to reason with you, and I sometimes doubt your intellectual honesty, but I've never seen you speak to anyone out of malice here and I suspect that you're a decent human being in real life. It would be gratifying if you saw someday that the inner truth you feel of your connection to God shouldn't be threatened by the truth of the physical world around you that you sometimes so stubbornly deny. If your God is real and he's good, then you shouldn't have to think that this universe is other than what science reveals it to be. God wouldn't lie to you, would he?By the way, it's a-theist, not a-thiest. As in, no theos. No God. That's all.*For you foreign folk, that's American football and American baseball, respectively.

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I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John Lydon

Hyro, for seven long years I've detailed the difference between Christianity and popianity/vaticanity. What ever you want to label the RCC, it is not Biblical NT Christianity. It is the harlot woman/Mystery Babylon of Revelation 17 and 18, whom the text says is drunken with the blood of the true saints. It has a history of violence whereas NT (I say NT) Christianity has no history of violence, nor did Jesus and his apostles advocate such violence as has been practiced by this illigitimate system who's holy father is not the Biblical god, Jehovah, but their alleged infallible pope man sitting on his golden jewel studded throne in Vatican City..Whenever I alude to Christianity, I am referring to the NT fundamentals of Christianity, i.e. Christian fundamentalism. It doesn't matter how many times I explain this, the same people on this board simply ignore what i have explained and post their strawmen responses falsly associating Christianity to violence.The people that the popes and bishops of the RCC tortured and brutally killed in the inquisitions were the true Christians who refused to recant and be converted to Catholicism.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

There's a lot more relative to Biblical values than blind faith, Zen. As follows is a consise list of Biblical values off the top of my head.1) A logical explaination of past, present and future
2) Historical evidence,
3) Archeological evidence
4) Basic scientific LoTs compatibility
5) Knowledge of underdanding the past and the future relative to fulfilled prophecy
6) Social and cultural values observed in application of Biblical NT principles, the Ten Commandments, the wisdom Proverbs of King Solomon, etc.
7) Personal experiential spiritual renewal (the last known only by personal experience) which brings a measure of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, being "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness and self control. " (Gal 5:22, 23 ASV) I appreciate the kind words, Zen; I really do. May God bless you and yours for them. They don't come my way often here.As to observing the physical world around me, I don't know how closely you've followed my profile history in the threads, but my faith is far from blind. It is the physical things I've observed which continually strengthen my faith in the Biblical record. The more science comes to observe, the more wonderfully complex it all becomes and the more sensible ID gets. There's no problem relative to the before, the outside of, the abiogenesis, where energy came from, climate change, the Israeli-Mid Eastern phenomenon and how it will end, where we came from and where we go.In conclusion, there's so much corroborating evidence for what I have come to know as truth that I'm thoroughly convinced of it. I've come to the conclusion that the more string, quantum and mathmatical science gets the more obscure, metaphysical, questionable and illogical it gets for the understanding.Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, when National Geographic's Robert Ballard ventures into the Gulf of Aqaba to refute or substantiate the work of marine biologist, Lennart Moller who sailed his marine research craft into the Gulf and photographed the Exodus evidence at Nuweiba Beach, I'll stop accusing National Geographic of being intellectually dishonest.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Huntard, the atheist members on this board are all intelligent folks. I would assume that being such, there must be some unique values relative to atheism which cause them to be atheist.Human cultures throughout the history of mankind have had a religious bent. Atheists must have a reason to value their atheism. I've cited the only reason I can think of. Perhaps there are other unique values relative to their atheistic bent. I don't know.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

To speak for myself, the unique quality that atheism has that sets it above all other opinions on religion, and the sole reason that I value it, is that it appears to be true.What other reasons should there be for forming an opinion on a question of fact?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

So were Luther and Calvin not Christians? Whereas the people who were tortured and brutally killed by Protestants were just a bunch of Catholic heretics.

Then how can you say: if you don't actaully know what their values are, were you lying then or now?

---

It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds
soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

The "reason" you cited was our desire to not have to be answerable to a higher power. Of course, you've failed to truly consider the implications of your beliefs.I agree with you that the atheists here are intelligent folk. I'm sure you would agree that intelligent folk who have a healthy self-interest want to base their decisions on reality, rather than someone else's fantasy. This being the case, how in the world can you conclude that not wanting to be answerable to a higher power would be a value held by atheists, unless they in fact actually believe that there is no higher power? You cite this apparently as evidence for the existence of a higher power. Atheists instead look at the wide variety of different and contradictory beliefs about religion and see that as evidence of a lack of a higher power. If all your neighbors said there was a giant turtle in your backyard, but they all gave different descriptions of it, would you assume that there was a turtle, or that they were all hallucinating?Truly, Dr A summed up the basis for atheism quite succinctly: That is the only thing that unites all atheists. Would I prefer a world where evil is punished and goodness is rewarded? Since I consider myself a good person, of course I would. I'd love to believe that there's some pie in the sky to make all the nasty in the world worth it in the end to those who don't deserve what happens to them. I suspect most good people feel that way. However, my beliefs must correspond to what I see in the real world, and there's no significant evidence to support such a belief. And I refuse to believe in something for which there isn't sufficient evidence just because I wish it were so.Now, if you want to call that a value, that's okay with me. I'm not particularly interested in arguing semantics. But other than the preceding paragraph, I sincerely doubt that there's anything that all atheists have in common.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

The lack of evidence for a god, I'd say. But Dr. A. summed it up very nicely too: ---- So, you in fact don't know what values atheists hold, yet you seem convinced that these are bad values. I find such reasoning very strange.

Since we're off-topic anyway (and this is coffee house): This brings to mind the well-known Aesopian parable of the blind men and the elephant.A few blind men are having an argument over the nature of elephants. One man, holding the trunk, believes elephants are long snake-like creatures. Another, who feels only the leg of the elephant argues that elephants are like trees. Etc etc.All of the blind men are right, in a way, having captured a single aspect of the elephant. While they may agree on a few things (the smell for example), their blindness gives them vastly differing opinions of what an elephant is. Another blind man would be wrong to draw the conclusion that elephants do not exist based solely on the fact that there is disagreement on what an elephant is.I'm not claiming that human belief in the supernatural constitutes evidence for it. I'm merely pointing out what I perceive as a flaw in your turtle allegory. The fact that there are many contradictory beliefs about God or gods is hardly reason to conclude that gods do not exist.Respectfully,-Meldinoor