Your comment was more consistent with that general problem. Patrick didn’t complain about Michelle’s question being insulting. He insulted Christianity, but perhaps he would not express much offense if atheism was also insulted. Maybe he’s the kind of person who is fine with tit-for-tat. I don’t know for sure. But I certainly would think that would be more equitable, if atheists want to dish out hard criticisms and are equally OK when others respond in kind.
Nevertheless, you can see that in this thread I did respond to Patrick several times too.
Another thing that you should remember, is that in your initial post, you used the pronoun “we”.
(Emphases in the above quote are mine)
Thus, I took you to momentarily be speaking “for atheists” in this thread and in solidarity with Patrick, as a fellow atheist. (After all, Michelle’s question was originally meant for Patrick, not you.) In that moment, you chose to call out a perceived insult by Michelle, but you didn’t call out any of the bad posts by Patrick. If you had done a bit more homework to see the context of the thread, you would have seen that Michelle’s question was quite mild compared to what Patrick had posted.
Death is a good thing in the sense that it is a necessity - if no one died in this natural world problems like overpopulation would abound. If it were possible to snap my fingers and remove death from the world, Torchwood: Miracle Day-style (keeping everything else the same), I for one would NOT do it. That is separate from the consideration at a less grand scale - people losing their loved ones, especially prematurely, is painful because we enjoy their presence in our lives. The people who actually die are also deprived of their life - their aspirations and desires. Another consideration is to what extent a finite life gives meaning to the living. An eternal life in some conceptions of Heaven is quite a different consideration from an eternal life in this natural world.
This is all quite an interesting philosophical subject, but is generally disconnected from the concept of millions prematurely suffering and dying as a result of a pandemic, which seems quite obviously objectionable. Quite different from asking about the general concept of death.
Did you miss this comment, or is “resent” not a strong enough verb for you?
You’ll also note that my reply to Michelle wasn’t simply calling out a perceived insult. It was actually intended as an answer to her question, only noting at the end that it comes across as insulting. I’m not here to police everyone’s comments, I’m here for discussions. You’re the mod, not me.
EDIT: in fact my original reply to Michelle didn’t even mention that the question was insulting, it just answered her question and at the end I mentioned offhand that I was amazed she felt the need to ask the question (because the answer seems obvious to me). It was only in my first response to you that I mentioned, again as a minor point, that it was a little insulting.
I’m not going to waste more time defending my decision to “call you out”. By the way, I was acting there as a fellow thread participant, not a mod. I think it’s pointless to try to split hairs over whether you or Patrick deserved being called out more. In the end I’ve responded to both of you. Let’s focus on the arguments now instead of perceived insults.
I am curious as it relates to the idea of death - why is overpopulation bad? And why does need death to be a necessity to combat overpopulation? You could just institute laws on reproduction. What do you think?
This happened before the pandemic too. Do you think it says something different about the character of God that there are more people who don’t get to live to an old age because of a pandemic compared to the character of God when death is at its typical pace?
Why does Christians understand and process the relationship between God and suffering differently than atheist do? Isn’t human empathy and compassion an evolved human trait that all humans possess? Why should there be a difference between humans? The Christian humans vs. the non-Christian humans?
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.
Yes, I claim blasphemy as my right to mock, criticize all Christian dogma, doctrine and beliefs. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love all of you (especially @Michelle).
Disclaimer: This is a parody on the Christian love the sinner hate the sin routine. Happy New Year, y’all.
Yes, let’s focus on the arguments. I claim that human empathy and compassion are evolved human traits coming hundreds of thousands of years before Christianity. And it is these evolved human traits that made culture and society possible. I claim that Secular Humanist values of the Enlightenment, and not the resurrection of Jesus Christ, are responsible for the values, ethics, laws, and the goodness of human society today.
Seriously? I think we often have rational discussions on religious belief on this forum. (Yes, some discussions eventually run off the rails at times but that can happen with just about any lively topic on just about any forum, at least once in a while.)
We have our moments here but I think peace is the general trend at Peaceful Science. And I’ve had lots of “live and let live” fun discussions with @Patrick on a great many threads. We might not succeed in changing anyone’s mind but “a good time was had by all.”
Well, I haven’t seen them happen here and I am a regular reader of this forum. I see lively discussion on many subjects but nothing that changes people’s views about religion.
Sure. My point was the narrow one that arguments about personal belief are fruitless in my experience. I also separate the freedom of thought from the freedom to act on those beliefs.
The idea that death is bad comes from the desire to keep living, which comes from a very long period of evolution. Love also comes from evolution; it’s an evolved emotion. You may be right that the idea that death is bad may lead to the idea that people shouldn’t die and inspire belief in heaven. But of course that doesn’t make it true; that something would be nice is not a reason to believe it’s true, though many seem to think so.
And of course if heaven really were waiting, death should be welcomed, so by your logic the fact that we think of death as bad is a reason to doubt the afterlife.
That has a name: the naturalistic fallacy. “Is” and “ought” are not the same.
I continue to read and participate on this forum for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is intriguing to hear about how different people develop their personal belief systems.
In the midst of these dialogues I am sometimes surprised by the comments that can trigger anger in others. The discussions highlight many areas for growth and room to gain increased understanding of different perspectives.
That is true, many Christians look forward to the afterlife. My brother-in-law had a near death experience in which he saw Jesus, and was afterwards bummed that he had to come back to life.
If love is only an evolved emotion, does that strip love of its meaning?
Then what event does “a reflection of God’s providential timing and faithful provision to humanity” refer to, if it isn’t the pandemic?
If it’s the development of vaccine technology, then it’s hardly “providential timing” to get it so recently that it took more than a year to develop a vaccine.
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