I disagree with your assessment of Atheism. I do think that, of course it exists, it's just a matter of understanding what it is. Theism, the belief of a deity or some other intelligent 'creator'; Agnosticism, the acknowledgement that one can not ever know for certain or generally not caring; and Atheism, which involves not accepting Theism on pure word and fallacy alone, and often opposing it for that reason. Atheism and Scepticism is the search for logic and proof, not inherently the bull-headed refusal, which is a belief in it's own right. This is what the dictionary has to say on faith:

1 complete trust or confidence in someone or something : this restores one's faith in politicians.
2 strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
• a system of religious belief : the Christian faith.
• a strongly held belief or theory : the faith that life will expand until it fills the universe.

And logic:

1 reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity : experience is a better guide to this than deductive logic | he explains his move with simple logic | the logic of the argument is faulty.
• a particular system or codification of the principles of proof and inference : Aristotelian logic.
• the systematic use of symbolic and mathematical techniques to determine the forms of valid deductive argument.
• the quality of being justifiable by reason : there's no logic in telling her not to hit people when that's what you're doing.
• ( logic of) the course of action or line of reasoning suggested or made necessary by : if the logic of capital is allowed to determine events.
2 a system or set of principles underlying the arrangements of elements in a computer or electronic device so as to perform a specified task.
•

Logic is the word for someone with an objective train of thinking, the search for proof, while faith is belief without proof.

I do know the kind of thing you're thinking of when you hear the word sceptic. In my experience, there are two types of sceptics and atheists: Nice atheists; and fundamentalist atheists.
Nice atheists are people that are not convinced by theism for reasons such as the fact that it is entirely faith based and without proof, which is something that they need before they will believe something. If they do recieve sound, tangible argument or proof, they may well change their minds.
Fundamentalist atheists are just as bad and as inherently wrong in their own way as fundamentalist christians, jews, muslims, scientologists or catholics, because they don't care, they only wish to stubbornly deny everything said to them by theists. I don't much care for these people, they irritate me as much as theists can, because in their stubborn denial, they in a way are part of their own belief system. They believe that theists are all inherently wrong. Nice atheists just want some tangible proof and once they get it, will happily become a christian or a jew or a muslim, et cetera. In the words of David Duchovny: "I want to believe." It just takes proof, which is more than theists seem to be able to give.

Back on 'thropes and therians...

Could you clarify what you mean by 'biological or evolutionary'?
Basically what I am debating is the existence of 'physical' werewolves or therians, that is, the kind of people that claim they can physically change their bodies into something else. That, I think is untrue. If we are discussing 'spiritual' or 'emotional' or 'mental', I do not believe there is any reason for argument at all. When talking of the spirit (noun, 1. the nonphysical part of a person that is the seat of emotions and character; the soul : we seek a harmony between body and spirit.) I have no doubt whatsoever than someone can have an emotional connection with something, or adopt emotions of something non-human. I personally believe this to fall into psychology, not anything 'mystical', but I do not doubt it in the least. For example, I have an emotional connection to my eight-year old Staffordshire Bull Terrier. I do not adopt her form of thinking, but I do believe one can put oneself in any frame of mind. All it takes is imagination. Take my rationalisation of this as you wish, but I do not think any 'spiritual' or 'emotional' therians/werewolves (which I do think are the same thing) are involuntarily so. Mentally, does come down to psychology. A psychological belief that someone is something that they physically aren't is common enough, be it the crippling mental disorder, be it imagination, or be it simply how your brain thinks, whether or not it affects your ability to socialise. These therians and werewolves are completely legit. I have never doubted that emotionally, psychologically, you can be whatever you want.
I do, however, doubt that anyone has the physical ability to actually change into something else, regardless of how much you want it, and that is what I am debating.

For anyone who is not aware--you all do seem very well informed, but just in case--the mental disorder I am talking about does exist, and is called clinical lycanthropy. It is essentially a human suffering from hallucinations of transforming or having transformed into an animal, during which time they tend to adopt the behavioural patterns of their animal. They mentally see themselves to physically be animals, so even though outside their own minds they physically are not, their hallucinations make them physical werewolves, but exclusively to them. It is interesting to note that it could be any animal, horse, frog, lizard, bee, cat, bird, dog et cetera. In fact, only a very small number of people believe to be dogs or wolves. This may sound like fun to some people around here, but it is not a 'ooh I'm a dog, let's get on with life' sort of thing. It's crippling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_lycanthropy

In your wording, you are correct. Yes I am an atheist and no I do not immediately believe in these things in the phyisical sense, like I have mentioned. But I think you're looking at atheism and scepticism with way more severity than it deserves. Logical, fair scepticism and atheism are not beliefs. They're just people looking for tangible answers or tangible proof. Fundamentalist atheists and sceptics who only care about shouting "BS!" are an entirely different thing altogether, and are wrong in their own way. I want to assure you that I am not one of those people.

Last edited by isafos (2008-10-24 00:48:48)

That's very interesting, I'm not very well versed in the history around then, my interests have more recently been primarily modern, 1900's onwards stuff, and trying to piece together what we know about Egyptian mythology. Where did you hear all that about ancient humans and wolves? I would not have expected that at all.

Last edited by isafos (2008-10-25 04:26:06)

Ahkay, first, Gilgamesh (I've read it) doesn't have any werewolves in it. Inkidu wasn't a Werewolf and neither was Nebuchanezer. That's pretty much wishful thinking.

The Neuri is another matter. The first clear mention of Werewolves to survive to today is in herodotus' Histories and he's the one that recorded the Scythian reports of Werewolves around 500 BC. Some of the early history is included in Adam Douglas'  "The Beast Within". others you can track down in various journals and books that are not primarily about Werewolves. For instance, Carlos Ginzberg talks about the trial of Theiss in his book, "The Night Battles".

If you want information about early Werewolf history (at least anything reliable) you have to get away from the Internet and get into the journals and research monographs. Modern civilization doesn't care enough about werewolves to make factual information accessible.

But notice in the timeline above that there's a considerable jump between 500 AD and 1500 AD that very little is mentioned about Werewolves. Although it's hard to find information about Werewolves in that period, that's the interesting time because Werewolves were an excepted part of the human community.

History of Werewolves is like archeology - you find fragments and you have to put them together to find the larger patterns. Not much real information survived the Inquisition - you have to look in outlying areas beyond the strong control of the Catholic church. Eastern Europe is richest in our history but the Celtic Christians also saved some information.

The Scythians didn't leave a written account but they were prolific artisans and some of their art provide tantalizing hints about the Neuri.

There is a research monograph by Harry S. Senn called "Werewolves and Vampires in Romania". It's useful as is the collection of studies published by Richard Noll, "Vampires, Werewolves, and Demons."

If you really want to know about Werewolves, go to a college with a large research library, be very widely read (some books that talk about Werewolves never mention Werewolves), and take notes much better than I did (When I was there, I though I was the only one and I was studying for myself only).

One day, if I live long enough, I'll finish the timeline on my site. I doubt if I'm going to live that long though. The modern Therian community is more important to me and takes priority.

Dang,..I forgot, WVZ has a time-line on his website!

*thinks and wonders if being red-haired is a neanderthal trait sense they have genetically proven that neanderthals were red-haired.*


Siverwolf.

Take your time, there's no rush.

There is a theory that humans became civilized by their association with wolves/dogs.

Your right about the suspicion. Witches were said to ride their familiars to the sabat.

I don't remember Augustine ever saying a specific timeline for creation but the Archbishop Jame Ussher had it nailed down to 10/23/4004 BC. The older traditional Catholic date was first published by Eusebius - he said that it was 5199 BC. Eusebius was a major historian of the early church and could easily be confused with Augustine.

Augustine, by the way, was an evolutionist.

isafos wrote:

But then, if Adam and Eve were here at the beginning, before non-existent 'dinosaurs' like they say, and if they were truly the mothers and fathers of mankind. Then that would make all of us Cousins.

I feel so darn-tootin' southern.

Though i dont know how true it is, i think it says in the bible (and this is not a critique) that there were other people in the world when adam and eve were banished from eden, but i could be way off on that, I also read somewhere, i dont remember where though, that there was another woman before eve, her name was lilith, but again i could be way off.

WolfVanZandt wrote:

Neither of those is in the Bible. The 'other people" theory is in answer to, "If Adam and eve were the only two people, where did their sons' wives come from?" The implication is that Adam and Eve were not the only people around after their sons' grew up. But, of course, all those "other people'" could have been more offspring of Adam and Eve.

It makes sense, but there really is no way to tell, unless you lived at the time that this all happened.
also there are some things about the bible, though, that just dont make sense to me, but ill keep them to myself so that i dont offend anyone.

That's pretty much how history is - we really don't know because there wasn't anyone there to provide a witness.

Yeah, well, then it comes on to the argument of whether or not 'past lives' is a real phenomenon, which is a fairly pointless one.
I'm not a Buddhist. I'm personally of the opinion that we just die and rot, period.

I bring it up from personal experence. I remember living multable past lives as a wolf. I've had alot of the feelings teenlycan described, but most of them I can link to a memory from being a wolf.

lupen the wolf wrote:

On another note I personaly think that a physical change into a wolf or wolf like creature is imposible

At the moment, yes, but im working on an idea that might change that, though there are alot of issues that i still need to work out, like what do i do if i actually follow through with the idea.

Werewolf Incomplete wrote:

lupen the wolf wrote:

On another note I personaly think that a physical change into a wolf or wolf like creature is imposible

At the moment, yes, but im working on an idea that might change that, though there are alot of issues that i still need to work out, like what do i do if i actually follow through with the idea.

Do tell. Presumably most dedicated members here would be able to help if you went through with it and it worked. I'm pretty sure Rexwolf would.