The Theist Hatred Of Atheists

[A rope leash]

Hey, ma! Look what I made!

Yes, life is a mind-boggling perception to be experiencing.

The elements of the earth came together, and physics combined with some chemistry and maybe some plain old good luck and electricty conjured up primitive life in a primoridial swamp somewhere east of St. Louis. As the the laws of nature worked their chaos, life became more and more complex, culminating after millions of years in the current planet infestation known as "mankind".

This seems a bit hard to swallow, I can understand. But, it is far easier to swallow this than the idea that a fanastically advanced entity capable of creating and controlling universes somehow came into being and evolved to the point where it decided to create human beings and take a special interest in them.

Simple things come first, then complex things. Life is absolutley a fabulous and beautiful display for a planet to hold, we should always promote it, but not because we think some god made it for us, but because it may well be the absolute only speck of it in the entirety of matter within the observable universe.

Of course, it's easy to look around and say, "this looks created". This is the nature of chaos...a tree appears to be quite random in design up close, but from afar trees have signature shapes. There's plenty of cause to elevate and adore life, but we shouldn't forget that beneathe the beauty of nature lies a fairly ugly system of survival. Mankind flourished because his brain evolved to the point where the common man doesn't even need most of it, and along with this the configuration of his body has proved to be quite useful and adaptable.

It would be nice if human beings had a "reason" for being. I suppose there could be higher life forms, but I've never seen one. The "reasons for living" some religions come up with too often include some obscure role in the plan of some invisible, game-playing controller-god. That's not freedom. Chaos is freedom.

The probable reality is that we are the result of natural chaos on a uniquely placed planet, and as such we are undoubtedly the most advanced form of life for many light years in every direction.

We should act like it.

 

[Wendi]

I don't hate atheists. I wonder why so many of the more vocal ones I've either known, or seen on the internet, seem to hate christians. I think perhaps it is largely a case of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch on both sides, but we're both too blinded by our own prejudice to see that.

 

[beachmaster]

The character that serves to un-unite supporters for the cause. Smart ass comments like your only serve to stir crap--- they certainly don't help serve to unite.

The character that would seem to enjoy the effort of attempting to offend peeps.


But the un-unite part is the main character aspect I was referring to.

Does nothing to help Ron Paul. And neither does this thread.

Goodnight.

I'm sorry to see your hatefulness come out like that, especially being a fellow Ron Paul supporter. I can't find anything in my posts that would "un-unite" us. In fact, I think I've made a damn good case for being united. I've suggested that we each all admit that we don't have rock solid proof of a God, where or how life began, etc., and that we just admit that since we do not know for sure (with solid proof) that we each say that we merely believe the way we do and in making such admission, we can all get along. I see that won't do for you though. That's a shame.

If you got offended because I asked you an honest question about the gender of your god, please understand that I didn't mean to offend, merely to provoke thought. Forgive me if I did offend.

May you (and all of us) be blessed in (y)our struggle for freedom. And in that, I certainly hope you join me in defending the right to believe or disbelieve as our consciences dictate, so long as we harm no other.

 

[beachmaster]

I don't hate atheists. I wonder why so many of the more vocal ones I've either known, or seen on the internet, seem to hate christians. I think perhaps it is largely a case of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch on both sides, but we're both too blinded by our own prejudice to see that.

Well I'm only atheist regarding the gods that have been described to me through scriptures, holy texts, religions, etc., but I'm agnostic as to whether or not there is a supreme entity, cosmic consciousness, intelligent Universe, or what not.

My wife is still a Christian. I don't hate her. And I don't hate you, nor the other guy who seems peeved at me.

I truly want you to be free to worship as you please, so long as it harm no other.

Peace

 

[hillbilly]

I'm sorry to see your hatefulness come out like that, especially being a fellow Ron Paul supporter. I can't find anything in my posts that would "un-unite" us. In fact, I think I've made a damn good case for being united. I've suggested that we each all admit that we don't have rock solid proof of a God, where or how life began, etc., and that we just admit that since we do not know for sure (with solid proof) that we each say that we merely believe the way we do and in making such admission, we can all get along. I see that won't do for you though. That's a shame.

If you got offended because I asked you an honest question about the gender of your god, please understand that I didn't mean to offend, merely to provoke thought. Forgive me if I did offend.

May you (and all of us) be blessed in (y)our struggle for freedom. And in that, I certainly hope you join me in defending the right to believe or disbelieve as our consciences dictate, so long as we harm no other.

I was not offended.

It takes a lot more than tasteless & crude sarcastic questioning to do that, my skin is thicker than that. Because, however you meant it, that's how it came off.

Where is the hatred? I see no hatred in my posts. Simple plain facts the way I see them are what I posted.

You go your path & I go mine & it's all good.....I even said that before your snarky remark about God's possible penis. I called you out on being sarcastic, tasteless, crude....oh & add infantile to that too--you can call it thought provoking if you wish, because that does serve your purpose, I suppose.... AND because I also called you out as being one of those who would rather un-unite people for Ron Paul, you see my remarks as hateful? Thin skin, beach. Yes. I said it. Un-unite. Every one of these pro-Christian or anti-theist threads on this forum does exactly that.

Let me share with you some wise words from Carl Sagan:
"Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged."
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
^^^I sincerely try to live this^^^

No. I certainly don't know it all. I never claimed to. I don't think anyone here ever really claimed to. If they did, your post might be better directed towards that them.


I've been a member here for a while & personally got disgusted with the generally snarky nature of this particular forum. I have been coming back on & off for a bit, hanging out in the NC section......but thank you so much for reminding me why I left. Generally I'm one of the most chipper & genuinely happy people I know (and this can be confirmed through a few real-life agnostic, atheist, and Christian friends I have that are members here but don't visit the forum anymore either). It's immature self serving responses like you have shared with me that bring this entire place down & make it an unpleasant forum.

I came here for stimulating discussion and was terribly disappointed. Next thing, I'll be judged as being intolerant & judgmental as well as hateful.

So long as it's postjudice, not prejudice, I'm ok with it. I know who I am & it's none of those things.

 

[Tanner]

An External Perspective:

For me, life presupposes a Creator. Chaos and random chance never give rise to order.

God is eternal, and has no beginning or end, thus making Him God. I am curious as to how an atheist explains life and its origin without God in the equation. How does an atheist explain logic, or morals? In a world with no absolutes, is there any truth? Could we recognize it?

Whether a person is atheist, theist, polytheist, etc., there are absolute truths in the world. These truths are where morals are derived from. If one chooses to excel beyond these truths, whether it becomes inspired through religion, spirituality, sheer happiness, perception or any other means is entirely subjective. If done through volition and does not harm another, then the believer perhaps will gain and thus become more happy. But to emphasize, these alternate "morals" are purely subjective, which does not make them intrinsically right or wrong as long as not enforced upon any other.

The absolute reality that brought most of us to this movement is simple and unequivocally true; regardless if one believes that there exists an afterlife, no one can argue that life on earth is infinite and/or unprecious. Each existence is an end in itself and must be respected, therefore the only immoral acts that can be committed by a group or individual are those that threaten or lessen life. These subsist of violence, the threat of violence, fraud or any derivatives therein whether direct or indirect. If life was infinite, morals would not be necessary; murder, theft, or other torts would be mostly inconsequential and punishment would not be necessary since time-value of an individual would not matter, not would any capital punishment apply. Any injustice could be attained at the brutish whim of the persecutor without real recourse.

This is the moral code, the only true empirical standard that can determine absolute right and wrong. Any additional "ethics" must be prescribed by an ulterior source, which should be administered freely, and therein lies the beauty of true liberty and the continuation of it. The proper role of the government, which should be determined a "protectorate," should be to correct injustices. When one has been wronged through violence, fraud, etc. it should be corrected as best possible by the Protectorate as the individual or group of individuals have proven that they cannot exist by the moral code, and thence should be punished or ostracized by the rule of law. The punishment can be determined by severity, precedent, the elected voice of a republic, a democratic process, or whatever combination is declared and can be changed by the creators, who instantiated it through volition, if deemed unfit.

The reasons why I wrote this may be obvious to most that read it; no matter where we come from, who or what we believe in, we have convened here for many reasons but almost universally for one purpose: the goals of liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness. Let us disagree, as I have found that usually observing and understanding another's views, just or unjust, informed or uninformed, strengthen my own logic and reason, as it must do for most of us, whether the result is immediate or it encourages a deeper, longer desire for objective truth. Also, the open communication, as opposed to closed hostility, usually leads to respect in the long term perspective. My goal is to attempt to unify a set of basic moralities we can all completely agree on; the other subjective moralities are entirely our own to interpret, enjoy, disapprove, share through volition, etc. These truths are what collectives of all types are against, regardless of what they express on the surface. Whether one believes we are bestowed life from a Creator, chaos, evolution, a combination of these or any other source, we must each understand that we are each alive and must continue to inspire others through peaceful means and demonstrations that true liberty is the only path to peace and prosperity.

*When the word "group" was used in this article, it is meant to describe a volitional organization, such as a business entity, spiritual organization, etc.

 

[beachmaster]

I was not offended.

Ok. It just seemed like it when you started with the name calling (the smart ass remark). I took it wrong I guess.

It takes a lot more than tasteless & crude sarcastic questioning to do that, my skin is thicker than that. Because, however you meant it, that's how it came off.

I certainly can see how it could come off that way. I could have asked, "what makes God a male... does he have a beard", but that's not how we determine gender. The quickest and simplest way we determine gender is whether a person has a penis or vagina. If God doesn't have either, then God is sexless, and I would suggest that the paternal designation of Father (which again implies sex, for the male fathers a child through sexual reproduction) is in error. Christians, including myself when I was one, get very offended by the Wiccans or others who claim there is a Goddess. I frankly would like to know why. If there is a God, I think it's ridiculous to suggest that it is a male or female. Thus, my comment. This conversation really shouldn't have come this far in a Ron Paul forum. Again, the overiding point I'm trying to make is that neither you nor I know for sure. I've admitted over and over that I don't know, and I'm simply illustrating that you don't either. The inability of Christians to answer the question about the gender of their god illuminates this premise, and if someone suggests that God is a male, or is a father, then the next and obvious question is "how so".

Where is the hatred? I see no hatred in my posts. Simple plain facts the way I see them are what I posted.

Again, I obviously misconstrued your "smart ass" remark. I'm now sure that it was used with loving intent.

You go your path & I go mine & it's all good.....I even said that before your snarky remark about God's possible penis. I called you out on being sarcastic, tasteless, crude....oh & add infantile to that too--you can call it thought provoking if you wish, because that does serve your purpose, I suppose.... AND because I also called you out as being one of those who would rather un-unite people for Ron Paul, you see my remarks as hateful? Thin skin, beach.

Well shit. I thought I was wrong, but maybe I wasn't. Now you seem upset again, and a little hateful. Snarky? Thin skin? Sarcastic? Tasteless? Crude? Infantile? Ok, if you think so. I respectfully disagree. You still haven't answered the question about what it is that makes your god a male, or a father. Maybe you can answer that question and leave sexual organs out of it, but you need to find another way to define a father and a male, or a person who is referred to as a "he".

Yes. I said it. Un-unite. Every one of these pro-Christian or anti-theist threads on this forum does exactly that.

If people wouldn't get so damned uptight conversing with people of differing religious beliefs, there would be unity and not "un-unity". I could care less what you believe. But when you start making statements of fact about your beliefs and imply that myself or others who don't share your faith are somehow bad people, I am justified in asking you to prove it or change your position.

The bible says the just shall live by faith. If that's so, then there is no need to make statements of fact as though you have proof. Once you admit that you operate on faith, and I admit the same for myself (or admit lack of faith as the case may be), then we can have some common ground in supporting Dr. Ron Paul, who by the way would no doubt want a government that allows me to be free to not have faith.

Hey I'm the guy who used to shout at people in the park that they were going to hell if they didn't repent and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. I admit that was a bad thing for me to do, and I deeply regret that I ever said those kinds of horrible things to my fellow man. So I'm speaking from a position of authority on this topic. I want unity, not hatred, between people of different belief systems. At the same time, I really enjoy discussing faith issues in lively thought provoking debate. If the penis remark doesn't provoke thought about what it is that makes God a "he", then I damn sure don't know what else will.

Let me share with you some wise words from Carl Sagan:
"Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged."
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
^^^I sincerely try to live this^^^

I do too. It is why I came to be such an agnostic after a lifetime of being a christian. I examined a lot of things to come to my current state of belief/disbelief.

No. I certainly don't know it all. I never claimed to. I don't think anyone here ever really claimed to. If they did, your post might be better directed towards that them.

See, that wasn't hard at all. We have this in common, that we do not know it all. But some previous statements seemed to imply that you did know it all about God, which god is the real god, etc. You have faith, I grant you that. You just don't have proof. And neither do I.

I've been a member here for a while & personally got disgusted with the generally snarky nature of this particular forum. I have been coming back on & off for a bit, hanging out in the NC section......but thank you so much for reminding me why I left.

Well you are very welcome. I sense a little sarcasm in your tone. I'm probably off base again however, so I'll just leave it at "you're welcome".

Generally I'm one of the most chipper & genuinely happy people I know (and this can be confirmed through a few real-life agnostic, atheist, and Christian friends I have that are members here but don't visit the forum anymore either). It's immature self serving responses like you have shared with me that bring this entire place down & make it an unpleasant forum.

Again, I'm sure I'm wrong, but it seems to me that terms like "immature" and "self serving" aren't really meant in the spirit of love. They seem a little south of that. But hey, that's just me.

I came here for stimulating discussion and was terribly disappointed. Next thing, I'll be judged as being intolerant & judgmental as well as hateful.

So long as it's postjudice, not prejudice, I'm ok with it. I know who I am & it's none of those things.

Ok, so we'll just end this on a happy note then! We'll agree to disagree on matters of faith, and agree to live and let live. Deal?

 

[Macon GA]

Evolutionists, have you ever considered the following? It seems to me that it takes just as much, or more faith to believe in Evolution than Creation.

1. Where did the space for the universe come from?

2. Where did matter come from?

3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)?

4. How did matter get so perfectly organized?

5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?

6. When, where, why, and how did life come from dead matter?

7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?

8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?

9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain this?)

10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code) create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.)

11. Is it possible that similarities in design between different animals prove a common Creator instead of a common ancestor?

12. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available and tends only to keep a species stable. How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occurred if evolution were true?

13. When, where, why, and how did
a. Single-celled plants become multi-celled? (Where are the two and three-celled intermediates?)
b. Single-celled animals evolve?
c. Fish change to amphibians?
d. Amphibians change to reptiles?
e. Reptiles change to birds? (The lungs, bones, eyes, reproductive organs, heart, method of locomotion, body covering, etc., are all very different!)
f. How did the intermediate forms live?

14. When, where, why, how, and from what did:
a. Whales evolve?
b. Sea horses evolve?
c. Bats evolve?
d. Eyes evolve?
e. Ears evolve?
f. Hair, skin, feathers, scales, nails, claws, etc., evolve?

15. Which evolved first (how, and how long, did it work without the others)?
a. The digestive system, the food to be digested, the appetite, the ability to find and eat the food, the digestive juices, or the body’s resistance to its own digestive juice (stomach, intestines, etc.)?
b. The drive to reproduce or the ability to reproduce?
c. The lungs, the mucus lining to protect them, the throat, or the perfect mixture of gases to be breathed into the lungs?
d. DNA or RNA to carry the DNA message to cell parts?
e. The termite or the flagella in its intestines that actually digest the cellulose?
f. The plants or the insects that live on and pollinate the plants?
g. The bones, ligaments, tendons, blood supply, or muscles to move the bones?
h. The nervous system, repair system, or hormone system?
i. The immune system or the need for it?

16. There are many thousands of examples of symbiosis that defy an evolutionary explanation. Why must we teach students that evolution is the only explanation for these relationships?

17. How would evolution explain mimicry? Did the plants and animals develop mimicry by chance, by their intelligent choice, or by design?

18. When, where, why, and how did man evolve feelings? Love, mercy, guilt, etc. would never evolve in the theory of evolution.

19. How did photosynthesis evolve?

20. How did thought evolve?

21. How did flowering plants evolve, and from what?

22. What kind of evolutionist are you? Why are you not one of the other eight or ten kinds?

23. What would you have said fifty years ago if I told you I had a living coelacanth in my aquarium?

24. Is there one clear prediction of macroevolution that has proved true?

25. What is so scientific about the idea of hydrogen gas becoming human?

26. Do you honestly believe that everything came from nothing?

 

[A rope leash]

The conundrum of the dum-dum...

"Do you honestly believe that everything came from nothing?"

That is the only question worth asking. It is something we cannot know. If we place a god into the question as a way of answering it, we then must explain how the god came into existence. To say that a god made everything means a god existed, which is a very complex thing. The god had to come from somewhere, right?

It has been said that the entire universe might have began with a single atom of hyrdogen. But, again, where did the hydrogen come from? This is beyond our abiity to understand since we do not have the information required to deduce such conclusions. However, if we say that a god placed the atom into the nothingness of space, we are saying that something existed before the hydrogen, so it didn't come from nothing. Some will say that god existed outside the universe and always has existed, but this is just as impossible as something coming from nothing. Everything has an origin. Not all origins are possible to determine.

This is how religion got it's start. People have honest questions about the mysteries of the universe. Religion assumes to answer these questions, many times with some convenient all-powerful being. 10% please. What a scam.

It is incorrect to say nothing organized ever came out of chaos. Everything came out of chaos. Chaos isn't as unruly and bad-mannered as one might think, because chaos is still contained within the boundaries of natural law. How did living things learn to reproduce? That's a silly question...they just did what comes natural. Did god give Adam and Eve a book on the subject? Did he demonstrate for them with Mrs. God? We'll never know, I guess, but lucky they figured it out, huh?

Now, some scientists are saying that dust in empty space tends to form a double helix...why is it so necessary for people to have a god to do this when it seems to be just the natural progression of material within the universe? No one knows for sure how it started or where it came from, but if you are going to have a god do it for you, you will have to explain the origin of that god, won't you?

 

[Ginobili]

Well, as a Agnostic leaning very far towards atheist, I have to say, Christian persecution DOES exsist, because I have no doubt that the persecuters I know TRULEY believe it is God's will, and truly pray for forgivness of everything, which covers ignorance sins, which means *POOF* no more evil, lets go burn some atheists and then just pray it all away! WOO HOO!... they seriously think they are doing nothing evil by treating some one diffrent then you like they are a pile of ****, all because they are told by their religious masters that its ok...

 

[Macon GA]

Can you provide an example where order comes from chaos?

Also, the fact that God is eternal and has no beginning or end, makes Him God. Now can I absolutely wrap my finite mind around that? No.

 

[beachmaster]

Well, as a Agnostic leaning very far towards atheist, I have to say, Christian persecution DOES exsist, because I have no doubt that the persecuters I know TRULEY believe it is God's will, and truly pray for forgivness of everything, which covers ignorance sins, which means *POOF* no more evil, lets go burn some atheists and then just pray it all away! WOO HOO!... they seriously think they are doing nothing evil by treating some one diffrent then you like they are a pile of ****, all because they are told by their religious masters that its ok...

I too have experienced the hatred. It was very evident when I announced to the congregation I belonged to that I no longer believed. I was a "lay preacher" in that group and gave mini-sermons every other week. I had participated in and even organized some of the feast activities. I was sort of a low level leader. When I went to my final sabbath meeting and told them about my in depth studies and my conclusions, some of them (not all) stared holes through me. A couple of them instantly stopped talking to me. To them (the mean ones) I became persona non-grata. I became as dead. I'll never forget the experience. These people were my friends, then suddenly they made me their enemy.

On the other hand, some of them, including the leader of our pack, remained friendly and invited me to come to some events, begged me to reconsider, told me they still loved me and said they expected me to eventually be resurrected back to them. One of our teachings was that almost everyone would eventfully be found in the kingdom in some manner or another (not everyone believed this).

Funny thing... they still use the website and the graphics I designed: http://congregationyhwhpc.com/ which I did back about five years ago.

Some will look at this group and say "they're not christian". Maybe not... but we followed the Old and New Testaments. Prior to me getting in that group, I attended mainstream christian churches (interdenominational, Church of God, Assembly of God, Disciples of Christ, and others). When I went over to the messianic group, a lot of christians told me I was in a cult or was a heretic, etc. Now I'm a simple apostate, and that's ok with me I guess. I've gotten quite used to it by now.

I have lots of christian friends now, many in the local Ron Paul meetup and they understand and know where I am at spiritually speaking. The Ron Paul people by far are the most tolerant, at least locally. Not so much in these forums though. It helps when you can talk to people face to face instead of online. As I mentioned above, my wife is still christian and we get along just fine.

 

[beachmaster]

Can you provide an example where order comes from chaos?

Here's a brief summary of Chaos Theory:

http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/

What exactly is chaos? The name "chaos theory" comes from the fact that the systems that the theory describes are apparently disordered, but chaos theory is really about finding the underlying order in apparently random data.

Lorenz started to look for a simpler system that had sensitive dependence on initial conditions. His first discovery had twelve equations, and he wanted a much more simple version that still had this attribute. He took the equations for convection, and stripped them down, making them unrealistically simple. The system no longer had anything to do with convection, but it did have sensitive dependence on its initial conditions, and there were only three equations this time. Later, it was discovered that his equations precisely described a water wheel.

At the top, water drips steadily into containers hanging on the wheel's rim. Each container drips steadily from a small hole. If the stream of water is slow, the top containers never fill fast enough to overcome friction, but if the stream is faster, the weight starts to turn the wheel. The rotation might become continuous. Or if the stream is so fast that the heavy containers swing all the way around the bottom and up the other side, the wheel might then slow, stop, and reverse its rotation, turning first one way and then the other. (James Gleick, Chaos - Making a New Science, pg. 29)

[Figure 2] The equations for this system also seemed to give rise to entirely random behavior. However, when he graphed it, a surprising thing happened. The output always stayed on a curve, a double spiral. There were only two kinds of order previously known: a steady state, in which the variables never change, and periodic behavior, in which the system goes into a loop, repeating itself indefinitely. Lorenz's equations were definitely ordered - they always followed a spiral. They never settled down to a single point, but since they never repeated the same thing, they weren't periodic either. He called the image he got when he graphed the equations the Lorenz attractor. (See figure 2)

There's a lot more to it of course. That site gives the basics however, and once you grasp it, you see that the random Universe is ordered. Weird, yet apparently true.

Also, the fact that God is eternal and has no beginning or end, makes Him God. Now can I absolutely wrap my finite mind around that? No.

Neither can most people. It's the same as if you say the Universe is eternal, has no beginning nor end. It is hard to grasp. If some thing or someone invented the Universe, then you could do an infinite regression of that idea and say someone or some thing invented that inventor, and so on back to infinity past. It's difficult if not entirely impossible to grasp infinity. But Chaos Theory demonstrates a form of infinity.

One mathematician, Helge von Koch, captured this idea in a mathematical construction called the Koch curve. To create a Koch curve, imagine an equilateral triangle. To the middle third of each side, add another equilateral triangle. [Figure 4] Keep on adding new triangles to the middle part of each side, and the result is a Koch curve. (See figure 4) A magnification of the Koch curve looks exactly the same as the original. It is another self-similar figure.

The Koch curve brings up an interesting paradox. Each time new triangles are added to the figure, the length of the line gets longer. However, the inner area of the Koch curve remains less than the area of a circle drawn around the original triangle. Essentially, it is a line of infinite length surrounding a finite area.

http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/

 

[Macon GA]

Beachmaster,

I have been a Christian for almost 20 years. Some of the meanest people that I have ever met were professing "Christians," although upon reflection I am not so sure that they were true Christians. I will leave that judgment up to God, as He sees into the hearts of all men.

I am sure that there are just as many mean and angry atheists out there too. I just don't have an occasion to bump in to them very often. We probably don't run in the same circles, so to speak.

I have learned that I can find something to like in just about every kind of person that I meet. I enjoy dialoguing with most as long as it doesn't become cruel and belittling.

I am married to a Presbyterian pastor, and we have had all kinds of different people come and go at our church. All have been welcomed in to my home, as would you and your wife were you ever to visit.

 

[A rope leash]

...mmmm, that's good brainfood!

Thank you, beachmaster for your informative post.

Can we discuss the possiblities of dark matter in the universe, our limitations in observing it, and the implications of sub-atomic particals winking into existence during a collision of atoms?

 

[Macon GA]

You said this:

"There's a lot more to it of course. That site gives the basics however, and once you grasp it, you see that the random Universe is ordered. Weird, yet apparently true."
(Sorry, I have never tried to figure out how to do the blue quote thing.)

Doesn't an "ordered" random universe disprove the Chaos Theory????? What looks like choas is actually ordered...

 

[Laughingcow]

Is there one instance in history where a group of atheists got together to destroy the religious? No? Not yet?

Actully, the communists do.

 

[Macon GA]

Touche, Laughing Cow

Yes! In Communism, God is replaced by the State.

 

[Laughingcow]

As a Christian, I have had friends from just about every walk of life. Gay, athiest, agnostic, bhuddist, indian spiritualist, muslim, many different races, and I have found for the most part that we could all have wonderful conversation and debate about our individual beliefs without going to war with each other. Some people act their faiths out to an extreme (vicious assaults on others) and some just believe to an extreme (expessing belief through benign acts and respectful debate). The ones who make the most ground are the latter, it is never good to use coercion by force to make another believe what you do, however if you don't expess what you believe to others, do you really believe in anything? A book by Dr. D. James Kennedy called "Why I Believe..." has helped solidify my thinking.

 

[jmdrake]

great article.

i am very sick of being treated like a plague-infested rat by theists, religious FREAKING FREEDOM. if i don't want do believe your crap, i am no less American then you you SCUM!!

Please read this:

http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=916

Then come back and tell the rest of us "theists" if you think Ron Paul is scum. This has got be be one of the dumbest threads ever.

Regards,

John M. Drake