If God does not exist, then the idea of God cannot be passed down in the culture
If the Hindu Gods don't exist, then the idea of the Hindu Gods cannot be passed down in the culture
Wait, they are.. So the Hindu Gods exists?
The Argument from Ontology only works with a monotheistic Deity. Are you so dense that you have never read that argument? Go back a way in the thread. Succinctly put:
1. I can conceive of a being a greater than which cannot possibly be conceived.
2. Existence is greater than non-existence.
3. Ergo, God exists.
Yes, actually. The average American, at least, reads at no higher than the Eighth Grade level. The average newspaper here is written at that level, with the New York Times doing a bit better at the 12th Grade level. Having been a Professor before, I know this shit.
And if you look at the language called Basic English, they manage to reduce the vocabulary to 800 words.
Professor David Crystal, author of amongst others, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, has this to say about estimating the average size of a person's vocabulary.
An easier question to answer, he maintains, is the size of the average person's vocabulary.
He suggests taking a sample of about 20 or 30 pages from a medium-sized dictionary, one which contains about 100,000 entries or 1,000 to 1,500 pages.
Tick off the ones you know and count them. Then multiply that by the number of pages and you will discover how many words you know. Most people vastly underestimate their total.
"Most people know half the words - about 50,000 - easily. A reasonably educated person about 75,000 and a really cool, smart person well, maybe all of them but that is rather unusual.
"An ordinary person, one who has not been to university say, would know about 35,000 quite easily."
Professor Crystal knows his shit as well and his shit seems to be different from yours. The question is who should I believe?
Notice, he's an Englishmen. Their education tends to be a bit better than ours. The avg American reads at the 8th Grade level. I am not exaggerating that. You would be astounded at how much the avg American, supposedly high school graduated, college-bound student does NOT know. Having dealt with them in entry level history courses, I know just how ignorant they are.
You are so full of shit its amazing. Go to Albania, which was officially declared a completely Atheist State in 1967, and EVERY house of worship was closed, and anyone who owned any religious material could be given extremely long prison sentences, and anyone who spoke of it in public was shot. Even the USSR never went quite that far.
I was stationed in Albania for a time, while NATO construction workers were building a highway to Kosovo. Yes, the women are very ugly, but the people are very nice.
In case you did not realise this, there are machinegun pill boxes littered all around the country. This was done when their paranoid leadership thought the US was going to attack at anytime.
Now, those pillboxes remain unmanned. There are just ugly women and gangsters everywhere, or at least that was the case 15 years ago. So, what is your point?
Yes, I was aware of the pill boxes. And I am aware that they are currently unmanned. My point is that the so-called "Communist" (which, while they were a lot of things, were NEVER Communist) states of the world, without exception, were EXTREMELY hostile to religion as a matter of course, Killing religious people was part and parcel of government policy, although none took it quite to the degree of Enver Hoxha, of course. Your point is...?
So the oral history of the Jews does not exist. Got it.
This meme idea is extremely simple and self-evident. The God meme is passed on by a culture participating in and propagating the idea throug story-telling, worship, rituals, holidays, etc.... Why are you struggling Yaakov?
If God does not exist, then the idea of God cannot be passed down in the culture, since the idea is inherantly illogical, like the idea "married bachelor". Either God exists or he doesn't. Story telling is one thing. But God, the ultimate power in the universe, either exists as a logical thought, or he does not. If he does not, then that illogical thought cannot be propagated. Since it can be, he must exist. A variation on the Ontological Argument. But true nonetheless.
So an idea of something cannot exist unless the thing actually exists? Is this your position?
If so, can you please tell me how I can get to Santa's workshop, where do I find the Easter Bunny's hole and how can I get that damn boogie man to stop bothering my son?
That is just a stupid response, and was dealt with years ago. The Argument from Ontology never intended to suggest that it strictly based on existence alone. Obviously, that would be foolishness. Although, even if that was true, you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who would say that the world is a better place because Santa existed or didn't.
The Argument from Ontology is predicated on the fact that a Being that is
Greater than Everything exists. Not greater in certain aspects. We're not talking about a greater Coke can, or a greater car, or something like that. We are talking about infinite greatness.
Taking the Coke can as an example, a greatest Coke can might have more Coke in it (which is a bummer if you like Pepsi) than any other Coke can, but the fact that it doesn't have Pepsi in it makes it not so great. God's greatness is universally recognised by anybody with a brain. I mean, I realise of course, that atheists don't qualify as having brains, but I shall deal with that matter separately.
Yonah, I'm a little hard pressed finding any evidence that atheists want to murder people and think they're better than everyone else. Could you mind giving me some sort of, you know, atheist bible that clears up all the atheist rules for me? Thanks. I want to make sure I'm being an orthodox atheist.
Yonah, I still can't find any rulebooks for atheism. Can you please help?
Irrelevant. Atheists don't need a rulebook. Intolerance and general assholishness are sufficient rules for them.
The treatment of religion in the communist countries sounds more like a problem with communism than atheism. America is an atheist country, it has no official religion, but it allows people to believe and practice how they want, within legal confines of course.
Are you allowed to wear clothing made of mixed material?
America may be many things, but Atheist it is not. It may not have an official religion, but the fact that it allows churches to perform marriages recognised by the State indicates that it is not officially Atheist. You want that, go to Mexico. There, you can get married in Church if you wish, but you still have to get married by the State, or your marriage is not considered valid. This is considered the case in MOST countries following the Napoleonic Code.
The fact that Iowa still has laws forbidding car dealerships from being open on Sunday indicates how non-Atheist the US is. Other states are the same way, with that and other laws, regarding the selling of alcohol, and other topics. You need to get your facts straight.
Clothing made of mixed material is not permitted in Judaism.