Atheists: Time to Come Out of the Closet!

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Where atheism becomes a definite stance rather than a lack of direction, a positive belief and not just a negative one, is in our understanding that, without a higher power, we need human power to change the world.
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You don’t have to be an atheist to conduct yourself as if people are responsible for the world they live in — you just have to act like an atheist, by taking matters into your own hands.

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Never heard of Kate Cohan. I like her.Anyone reticent about taking that last step into the real world and openly declaring their atheism, please reach out. I, and others here, can help fend off the last of your lingering demons.I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. -- Ecclesiastes 7:25Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. -- Matthew 7:7So, clear your thoughts of fantasy. Reality awaits discovery in the unencumbered mind. – AZPaul3 10:4

I appreciate your enthusiasm, however …You still have religious scales on your eyes. You’re not ready to cross the Hitchens Bridge.However … Since I have your attention …… I want to address this: If you think any puny self-centered humans, regardless of political stripe, will affect what has already been pre-loaded into the climate-disaster pipeline then, yes, you are delusional.I know Tangle chafes (second time I’ve used that word today. Interesting.) at all the gloom and doom I spew so I’ll spare him the usual details on the weather disruptions, crop disruptions, food disruptions, political disruptions … and, well, we’re fuckin doomed.That last book in your bible is going to become prophetic after all, just not in your favor. Watch as each seal is broken by the gross collective stupidity of man. But in this case each seal takes centuries to manifest. Many say, Phat, that the first seal has already fractured. Repent or not. Humanity is doomed.But, to bring this subject back to base, wouldn’t you, Phat, like to spend the rest of your days a free soul? Unencumbered by fantasy? No longer dependent on an evil ghost for your life’s purpose and identity? Think, man, don’t just feel. There is still room at the table for you, Phatman.

Yes. Most favored in a pharmacologically-enhanced state. Quite often.

What pain? What hopes? What are you talking about?Chanting mantras in my darkened room wearing nothing but my shorts and cotton lab coat is not for analgesic purposes or as pleas for existential relief. Such is just for the fun. Especially stoned. As I try to keep the mantra and dive deeper into my mind I usually end up fighting Romulans or moaning in some girl's bed.Yes, I do have a spiritual side. My greatest such experience was on a night of small unit maneuvers, 3am, no moon, no lights anywhere. When the eyes adjust you begin to see the details of the stars behind the stars you have already seen. I had my own ultra-deep field view and, in my mind, it stretched out forever.But the better part, the part that laid me out was when I stretched out my arm and cast a shadow in starlight. As a science nerd I knew where those photons came from, what they had been through. At that point my awe at the immensity of the cosmos and at the power of physics consumed me. I'd found my god.

Still munching on those jesus-meat crackers, I see, Altar Boy.That hasn't helped any. Talk on about morality and meaning all you want. Your gods are still fantasy and your church is still evil. The Majik Cookies didn't do anything. Your soul is still slated for oblivion like everyone else's. If you want to be a blind ignorant evil-doing ass making life miserable in the interim then you have made a good start.Bad human. Bad, bad human.

But evil lying priests are what you are. These are facts.You all proselytize your creeds as does any coven of priests. You lie about some old dead dude still being alive preparing the afterlife and your fantasy religious thinking creates evil actions in societies all around the world.This is not hate of people. This is fact with a great big rock of hate for religion and religious thought devoid of reality. We can burn down the temple without hanging the priest. Though we must keep in mind that we as a species can progress so much further so much faster when the last billionaire capitalist is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.That may sound hateful, but Phatman, this is fact.

If you define prophetic as extrapolating reasonable expectations from present configurations under varying assumptions to foretell the future then, yes, I am a secular prophet: AZProphet3. So is every other science mind on the planet. That’s one of the things science teaches you; looking into the future to see what our models say should be and then find out if we were right or not and adjusting our models accordingly. We get better and better at divining the dark hidden future. So, yes, I am AZProphet3, Minor Science Prophet, Retired. Sin is your priest-imposed relative morality trying to impose its will on others. Any concept of sin you may have is religious evil, imposed on your mind to control YOUR behavior unrelated to actual humanity.The strictures of secular society on social behavior and common mores is more effective at defining a viable humanist social morality than any imposed religious one. Religious morality is evil at its core and must be rejected on its face. See genital mutilation, AIDS treatments, witch burnings and wars of religious retribution all here in our modern times. Phat, it doesn’t matter whether your ghosts are myth or not. You are the one who insists they are real and effective in this universe. You are trying to prove their existence to us. You are the one who is supposed to show us your proof, your evidence, your facts that this ghost thing of your fantasy world is real. If you can't then it's bogus. They aren't real. They don't exist. If profuse religious bloodstains on our history are that blind to you then I question your humanity. Oh, yes, I have strong feelings against the evil religion has caused in humanity for millennia. You do see Gaza? Most profoundly pointed of religious wars. I don’t give a flyin’ flip what you teach. Religion's evil is in the priest's blood-soaked actions. Doesn’t matter. That kind of absolute is not necessary. All that is necessary is the preponderance of the evidence and on that score religions, all of them, can’t even begin to compete ‘cuz they have all of zero evidence of anything their creeds fanaticize. You all lose the intellect/logic/evidence requirements battle and are easily and rightfully dismissed. My alternative thinking is the natural consensus of the scientific community. Well, as close to that as my research, knowledge and understanding will allow expecting I will be corrected if I get too far from the ballpark. We are not the same.And attractive means nothing. Reality doesn’t do attractive. Our reality is fucking ugly. Life sucks and everywhere is pain. This universe is not a happy place to play in but it’s the only game in town. I cannot prove that I don’t hate people? Really, Phat? I think you lost track of the conversation.If the confusion was from the evidence I presented about you all being evil lying priests, well then again, proof isn’t necessary just evidence, which I did give. Each point in turn. You weren’t paying attention. Oh yes I do. Science is the only store where reality can be found. Your religious bs is as a knock off house pushing a bogus product. OK. Ummm, no. No friggin idea. No. The universe defines my reality. And yours. Science helps me discern what my reality is. Religion keeps you fogged in fantasy so to avoid this rather unpleasant reality. Unfortunately religion also leads to killing over the wording of the catechism and other such significant life defining events. Well, I have already declared we humans are the one and only gods and there are none that come before us, but you haven’t made me emperor so I can’t hang the last capitalist billionaire with the entrails of the last priest. I’m ready to enact the most draconian measures against religion and all pseudoscience but you gotta give me some help here to make this happen.

It's those jesus-meat crackers he keeps eating. They screw up the brain.Anyone who believes in ANY form of celestial spook, despite the lack of any form of evidence, even the most minor hint of efficacy, has deficient mental capacity and cannot be trusted to think.

Why should anyone believe he exists, Reverend? You show nothing but an impossible promise. A promise of everlasting life that cannot be kept.The operations of this universe do not allow the kinds of mechanisms you posit. Your spook has no reality in this world and cannot promise humanity anything. And no one, Reverend, can show us otherwise. Au Contraire. The greatest advantage is living in reality.

Disingenuous bullshit, Cracker Muncher. Your implications were quite clear.Anyone who commits a crime you don't approve of cannot be considered a christian let alone a cracker-muncher christian. Your bible doesn't say that and neither does your pope. In fact your religion is supposed to welcome the recalcitrant sinner.You are the liar.Your religion leads the list of evil creeds in prison.

We don't know, yet. Does that mean it never happened?That energy was known in this universe at 10^-43 seconds. Where/how it manifest into our universe we don't know. But it was there and had to either flow from some prior reservoir or spontaneously developed from some unknown mechanism.We don't know. What we do know is that our evidence shows strongly that this was the case. The CMB anisotropies and analysis of the acoustic oscillations imprinted on the early hot quark plasma leave no doubt that our models of the early universe are viable and this energy was there. All of it.As for size? Who cares? Whether the universe was once the size of a golf ball, a pea or an atom doesn't tell us how it came to be. Most probably it was all those at some time. But the one thing we did not find in the evidence was any majikal spook directing the show. If the universe is infinite then yes the energy systems of the universe could also be infinite. We don't know.One interesting thing you may want to research, Reverend, is the fact that the energy budget, all the ins and outs of all energy exchanges we can see, the total energy of this universe, is zero. Reverend, please, I'm not trying to get you to believe anything. You believe enough stuff already, most of that false. I am giving you the universe as the evidence the universe itself has presented us. No spooky overlords doing anything. And, yet, the evidence we have shows that preposterous reality to be actual. Fact. That presents you a major problem. Reality says you are wrong about your creed and you cannot show that reality to be in error. Your spooks are not real and you cannot show otherwise.