CommentsDisplaying shards of narsil's 10 most recent comments.

• Romney Uses Commencement to Reaffirm Marriage Between ‘One Man and One Woman’

  May 12, 2012 at 2:57pm

  http://southernbeale.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/romneyflyter.jpg

  really mitt? you didn’t seem to think so a while back. why the change of heart?

• The Blaze Invites You to Ask Prominent Atheist Your Most Burning Questions

  May 10, 2012 at 9:38pm

  In reply to He_is_God_and_I_am_NOT.

  i don’t hate christianity necessarily. i don’t hate islam. or judaism. or zoroastrianism, or any other religion you could care to mention. but there aren’t a great deal of zoroastrians in this country threatening my personal freedom.

  what i hate is when certain adherents of religion try and encroach on people and institutionalize religion when they simply want to live their lives according to their own conscience, so long as they don’t harm anyone else.

  “…..But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

• The Blaze Invites You to Ask Prominent Atheist Your Most Burning Questions

  May 10, 2012 at 9:05pm

  “Joe Schmuck
  Posted on May 10, 2012 at 8:42pm

  Shards of Narsil

  Thanks … I skimmed thru the letter not finding a satisfactory answer, for me that is. Maybe it was too wordy. I’m just an average Joe and maybe I framed my questions poorly.

  Basically, I’m curious as to what tragedy befalls the Christian after he dies if he is wrong about God. My answer would be … he does not go to a heaven that doesn’t exist.

  Also, the tragedy of an Atheist after death if wrong about God. My answer would be … he doesn’t go to a heaven that does exist.

  I’m looking for their answer and why they would risk that.

  Thanks again.
  Joe”

  speaking purely for myself as a person that, if i had to put a label on myself, is more of a hard agnostic than a definitive “atheist” (most atheists are really hard agnostics, but atheist is a more easy to understand term at first glance), i would answer your question by saying i risk it because i don’t see it as a 50/50 proposition. there have been thousands upon thousands of different religious/spiritual beliefs throughout humanity’s history, and there is nothing especially convincing to me of the judeo-christian one any more than there is of the zoroastrian one, or the greek pantheon of gods, or the nigerian yoruba gods.

  my line of reasoning is that if there is any kind of omnipotence that greets me after i die and asks me why i didn’t believe in it, then i’d be inclined to ask why it chose such unreliable method of re

• The Blaze Invites You to Ask Prominent Atheist Your Most Burning Questions

  May 10, 2012 at 8:30pm

  “Joe Schmuck
  Posted on May 10, 2012 at 7:48pm

  What is you downside to believing in God?

  What is the downside not believing in God?

  Why do you risk that?”

  This line of reasoning was dealt with best (in my opinion) by Thomas Jefferson in a now-famous letter to his nephew Peter Carr in 1787.

  “Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”

  http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_carr.html

• The Blaze Invites You to Ask Prominent Atheist Your Most Burning Questions

  May 10, 2012 at 8:27pm

  In reply to Inlightofthings.

  Inlightofthings
  Posted on May 10, 2012 at 7:58pm

  My question:

  Why is atheism a pre-cursor / pre-requisite to communism?”

  you should read about the history of the catholic church in latin-america, because it definitely isn’t.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology

• The Blaze Invites You to Ask Prominent Atheist Your Most Burning Questions

  May 10, 2012 at 8:01pm

  In reply to Joe Schmuck.

  To Joe Schmuck
  Posted on May 10, 2012 at 7:48pm

  What is you downside to believing in God?

  What is the downside not believing in God?

  Why do you risk that?”

  Thomas Jefferson deal with this question better than anyone I’ve ever read in a few sentences.

  “Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.” -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, his nephew, 1787.

  http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_carr.html

• The Blaze Invites You to Ask Prominent Atheist Your Most Burning Questions

  May 10, 2012 at 7:55pm

  “Why is the atheist to be pitied? Because he has no one to cry out to when receiving a BJ.”-christopher hitchens

• The Blaze Invites You to Ask Prominent Atheist Your Most Burning Questions

  May 10, 2012 at 7:39pm

  Hitler was an atheist? thats news to me considering his constant invocation of God/divine providence in multiple speeches and writings.

  “For eight months we have been waging a heroic battle against the Communist threat to our Volk, the decomposition of our culture, the subversion of our art, and the poisoning of our public morality. We have put an end to denial of God and abuse of religion. We owe Providence humble gratitude for not allowing us to lose our battle against the misery of unemployment and for the salvation of the German peasant.”

  “What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and the reproduction of our race … so that our people may mature for the fulfilment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe. … Peoples that bastardize themselves, or let themselves be bastardized, sin against the will of eternal Providence.”

  among many other quotes where he invokes some kind of belief in a deity. One can argue about the degree of his commitment to Catholicism, but Adolf Hitler was not, by definition, an atheist.

• Do You Know the Real Story Behind the ‘Jefferson Bible’? David Barton Shared it With Beck

  April 19, 2012 at 11:25pm

  Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

  -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

• Do You Know the Real Story Behind the ‘Jefferson Bible’? David Barton Shared it With Beck

  April 19, 2012 at 11:20pm

  “If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? …Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.”

  -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814

  oh and for someone asking for my qualifications, i’m a history/archaeology grad student. hoping to work in museum curation. queue someone piffling away at the idea of grad school on here in 3,2,1….