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Discuss religion here and vote in the poll.
Also: The I'm not sure option is sort of redundant, given that none of the other ones claim to be sure, but I didn't think that when I made the poll. Also, the option about believing in a personal god, but no religion, wasn't meant as a god which is personal, but more like your own version of it, or deism.
So basically:
Polytheism
Monotheism
Deism/non-religious monotheism
Agnostic atheism (very agnostic!)
Agnostic and gnostic atheism
I'm a slightly agnostic atheist.
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I say short. Im religious
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Why do you talk about them if your atheist? (Hope this isn't a bother)
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Oops I voted too fast. I voted Atheist, but I'm agnostic (not sure).
Well I find too difficult to believe in the Christian or in other gods. I would like to believe in one of them because my life would be more... "happy": I wouldn't fear death... Not believing in God(s) implies that there isn't life after the death.
I'm a scientific person, and scientists nowadays discovered how Earth was created and that life evolved (in opposition to the Holy Bible), and they are very near to understand how our universe is here.
The intelligence and conscience (what religion calls "soul") is most probably an emergent comportment of the complex system "brain" (after all it is composed only by neurons that shoot electricity to their neighbours); it's the same mechanism that permits ants to build anthill, they are stupid but they can build masterpieces of engineering.
Probably in 50 years (before my death... I hope...) we will create the first A.I. with the intelligence of a human brain. Robots will be born, and probably they will feel emotions just like us (and in that case I will call them "life"), as emotions are another emergent comportment of the brain. Actually we are near to create life itself.
If a God(s) exists it couldn't be like the Christian one described in the Holy Bible (In my opinion)
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NeutronStar, I'll pm you about why.
Btw good answer FGFG, I think you can revote (I enabled that option).
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Thank you both for the compliment and for enabling that option. Already revoted.
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I feel alone being the only atheist. :(
Darn, I shouldn't have enabled it. :P
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I'm agnostic, but I'm very near to atheism.
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I feel alone being the only atheist. :(
Don't worry, Im one too :)
Just for fun, heh. :)
Please vote if you want to. :)
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Only Atheist im pretty confused ???
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Perhaps Naru523 voted "Yes, I believe in a religion with more than one god." by a mistake... That's the only thing I can think of, but I've enabled the option to revote so if he did it he can revote. :)
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Did the debate ended here?
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Did the debate ended here?
Yup ;D. I this small interest topic :-\
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I will go on then :)
How do you think that God(s) interacts with the world, and if you don't believe in any god, why?
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I voted personal god. I believe that something created the universe. What that is I don't know. If it's still paying any attention to humans or had anything to do with humans at all, I don't know. I just don't believe that a condensed spot of matter came outta nowhere.
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I don't believe in a god because if it requires a god to create intelligence, it would just require an higher intelligence to create the god and on and on and on.
Then you could say that the god has always been there, but then I don't see the problem with an universe before our own, collapsing and creating Big Bang.
And, personally I just choose to believe in the natural before the supernatural. So, if something can't be explained by science, I try to think logically and find a natural explanation instead of saying "god made it happen".
There are also far too many contradictions and fails in the religions for me to believe in them.
I could never deny a scientific fact or theory just to believe in a religion. And I don't understand why some religious people believe that religions cause people to have better morals and better lives. If I read a holy book, all I see is people getting killed because they carry sticks on sundays or people who get killed because they don't worship a god. And statistics show that there are more religious people who commit crime in percent than atheists. And atheists don't divorce as often as religious people, but still there are some religious people who believe atheists are evil and cruel like... This:
YouTube video - If Atheists Ruled the World (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO9IPoAdct8)
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Well, nothing about the universe actually makes sense. We just think it does because that's how we grew up. Why does light have a set speed? Why to particles attract each other (gravity)? Why do things have mass?
EDIT: These discussions are always interesting to me because no one can win :D
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YouTube video - If Atheists Ruled the World (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO9IPoAdct8)
It was so hard to finish to see this video. It's so closeminded.
I'm atheist but I don't smoke and I don't like aborts or when a life is cut because I think that life is one of the best things in the Universe and I respect it over all the other things, infact I'm against war and death penalty for any reason (even religious: I'll never kill Christians because they believe in God; Everyone is free to believe in what he wants).
The moral isn't the religion. They are 2 different things.
About evolution: there are proofs that confirm it! An example? Dogs. Many races was created by crossing other dog races. Some centuries ago (not millions of years) they weren't on this planet.
P.s. what do they think about dinosaurs and their fossils?
About science "big words". You see a complicate word and you don't know its meaning? You can take a simple book called "Dictionary"... And, however, I didn't see any of this "big words" unexplained on the school books for example.
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Well, nothing about the universe actually makes sense. We just think it does because that's how we grew up. Why does light have a set speed? Why to particles attract each other (gravity)? Why do things have mass?
EDIT: These discussions are always interesting to me because no one can win :D
In fact, light moves faster or slower in other mediums than vacuum (sorry for the mistake with water, lol, but there is a material in which where photons can move... Wait, no, I think it's wr... Aaaargh! I'm confuzzled, but I think there was a material where photons could move faster than in vacuum, strange... I know there is something where light moves slower and molecules can move faster than the light, but perhaps that's what I'm confusing it with)...
Anyways, the discussions are win-able. I often discuss on the EA forum and it isn't that hard to win, most of those in there don't really know so much about space, biology and stuff, so... :P
Okay, there are some other clever people in there, but usually they're on my side anyways.
One of them actually posted a great page with evidence for evolution. I'll post it if you want to see it. :)
Also if you want to see any of the other discussions, I can post them too. :)
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In fact, light only has a set speed in vacuum, in water it can move faster than in space (:O).
Arrgh!! What I see!! :P In water light travels slower! ;)
One of them actually posted a great page with evidence for evolution. I'll post it if you want to see it. :)
Also if you want to see any of the other discussions, I can post them too. :)
You can link them, to not create mess here ;)
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About evolution: there are proofs that confirm it! An example? Dogs. Many races was created by crossing other dog races. Some centuries ago (not millions of years) they weren't on this planet.
P.s. what do they think about dinosaurs and their fossils?
It are not just dogs. Actually all the kind of animals you can enjoy eating during a visit in a fast food restaurant are products of human controlled breeding. A forced evolutionary process in which the breeder becomes the selector and decides which properties are good and which are bad. The difference in a natural environment is, that the natural selection process is less aggressive and therefor animals which are worser adapted to their environment will still be able to breed, however they are going to be repressed by the better adapted in the long run because the better adapted are better capable of reproduction.
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exactly
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Sorry, FGFG, I've re-written the area in my message, thanks for the correction lol (how embarrasing :-[).
Anyways...
10 human parts (http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/10631604-post56.html)
A nice post that shows some good evidence for the human evolution.
Discussion thread 1 (http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/general-discussion/768024-did-moon-kill-dinosaurs.html)
Discussion thread 2 (http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/general-discussion/768995-ireland-outlaws-blasphemy.html)
Discussion thread 3 (http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/voting-booth/728698-do-you-bleave-god.html)
These are some of the discussions about religions (or where religious debates started)...
And wait a second... I know the water-thing was false, but Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon) says this at least:
(Visible) light that travels through transparent matter does so at a lower speed than c, the speed of light in a vacuum. X-rays, on the other hand, usually have a phase velocity above c, as evidenced by total external reflection.
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I think that the phase velocity is not the velocity of the photons itself.
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Phase velocity is...
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=phase+velocity
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I think the eye is the worst example of evolution. It's a ridiculously complicated organ. I'm not saying evolution doesn't exist. It's just things like the eye make me think that evolution is guided in some way.
I couldn't watch the youtube video, I could tell by the name if it that it would irk me. I think of atheists as pessimists. I admit that I would really like some sort of afterlife.
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I think the eye is the worst example of evolution. It's a ridiculously complicated organ. I'm not saying evolution doesn't exist. It's just things like the eye make me think that evolution is guided in some way.
I couldn't watch the youtube video, I could tell by the name if it that it would irk me. I think of atheists as pessimists. I admit that I would really like some sort of afterlife.
The Evolution of Irreducible Complexity (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZdCxk0CnN4&feature=PlayList&p=F626DD5B2C1F0A87&index=15)
Examples: The Bombardier Beetle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUvLR2yyWuE&feature=PlayList&p=F626DD5B2C1F0A87&index=5) and The Evolution of the Flagellum (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdwTwNPyR9w&feature=PlayList&p=F626DD5B2C1F0A87&index=4)
Irreductible complexity doesn't mean a thing cannot have evolved.
Top 10 List Why Anti-Evolutionists are WRONG (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDFJviGQth4&annotation_id=annotation_598436&feature=iv) - one of them shows the eye. (Reason 6)
Start with a photo sensitive cell, you can tell if it's day or night. The cells expand into a patch of cells... You are more sensitive... The patch of cells become concave... You have some directionality... The patch of cells become very concave... You have more directionality... Clear cells form over the opening... Your proto-eye is protected... The clear cells refract the light... The image gains more detail... The clear cells focus the light... The image gains more detail...
Why do you think atheists are pessimists btw?
Btw the fact that we would like something is not an argument for it to exist - like I would really like a cake on the table when I go upstairs so I can eat it, sadly it's just very likely that there isn't one (ok, I wouldn't like a cake at all because it's unhealthy, but just to give an example).
I'm an atheist because I cannot accept answers that makes me rely on belief rather than evidence.
Here are some clever quotes from Richard Dawkins and some other atheists: Link (http://richarddawkins.net/quotes)
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But without the wanting of a table, it would not exist. Maybe just the belief in an afterlife will make it exist. Maybe you are right, there was a ridiculously large amount of matter in a small space and you know the rest.
I just want to know if science will ever explain the true spark of life. Where did the first cell come from? A meteor? A comet? There are certain things that science cannot explain. And if science can't, what do you turn to?
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But without the wanting of a table, it would not exist.
Yes, because, if you don't want one, what's the need of it!
I just want to know if science will ever explain the true spark of life. Where did the first cell come from? A meteor? A comet? There are certain things that science cannot explain. And if science can't, what do you turn to?
Hmmm...
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I'm really proud of everyone for having such a civil conversation about a potentially contentious topic.
Thanks!
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I'm really proud of everyone for having such a civil conversation about a potentially contentious topic.
Thanks!
I know, that's what I was afraid of. Glad it not happening. I hope I didn't just speak too soon. :P
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But without the wanting of a table, it would not exist. Maybe just the belief in an afterlife will make it exist. Maybe you are right, there was a ridiculously large amount of matter in a small space and you know the rest.
I just want to know if science will ever explain the true spark of life. Where did the first cell come from? A meteor? A comet? There are certain things that science cannot explain. And if science can't, what do you turn to?
As an atheist, when science cannot explain something, I believe in natural solutions.
A comet/asteroid/meteor (isn't that important, but usually comets contain organic material in form of carbon, so it might be a comet) brought some organic material (carbon) to Earth. When it happened, there were some fatty acids on Earth. And well... Watch this video:
The Origin of Life - Abiogenesis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg&feature=PlayList&p=0696457CAFD6D7C9&index=0).
That's the scientific explanation. Abiogenesis.
And then, after abiogenesis, evolution explains how life evolves.
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I just want to know if science will ever explain the true spark of life. Where did the first cell come from? A meteor? A comet? There are certain things that science cannot explain.
Indeed there is an explanation:
On Earth, about 4.4 milliard years ago, the oceans contained a lot of molecules, very complex molecules. With the tides or simply with the waves a little bit of water remained on the shore, forming the "primordial soup" (translation by google... don't know if it is correct). Here the water evaporated, but not the molecules, so the density of them raised. At a certain point, when the complexity raised to a critical value, some molecules started to aggregate, forming a bubble, with water inside and outside, a simple bubble. After a while some molecules entered the bubble and combined forming the first very simple organs. The first cell was born. With this process an enormous amount of different cells born, many more than the ones we know. Some didn't have DNA, other with many more simple organs than now. The natural selection, then, selected the ones we know, and pushed the evolution to go on and on and on... till now.
However I remain always fascinated by one thing, present even in the cell. The survival instinct. It's the thing that make every single animal, plant, cell, whatever, to go on even if there isn't hope. And it is the thing that make us fear death. I think that he created religion after all.
EDIT:
A comet/asteroid/meteor (isn't that important, but usually comets contain organic material in form of carbon, so it might be a comet) brought some organic material (carbon) to Earth. When it happened, there were some fatty acids on Earth. And well... Watch this video:
The Origin of Life - Abiogenesis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg&feature=PlayList&p=0696457CAFD6D7C9&index=0).
OOOps, Didn't noticed it! However it is correct.
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Lets see if I can explain this... :-\ I'm semi-religious. It's very complicated. I try not to be ignorant, I look for answers. If I can't find an answer then I look for relations to other occurrences. If there are none then its an act of God.
Does that make sense?
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Well this is why religion was born thousends of years ago ;) (nothing bad) : the Gods (Greek and preistorical) were personifications of natural elements (lightnings = Zeus, etc.), that logic was not able to explain.
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I am Catholic and do believe in God.
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Continued from another thread...:
I hope people in here don't get the feeling that I'm speaking against any form of religion, because I'm not
Ok, speaking of this, my friend is a... umm... I don't know... I forget... But, whatever. I wasn't there but he told me that two kids called him for stupid for being that religion. That is just messed up. And he also noticed one of them started feeling bad for him. That's messed up. I don't care wheter you are this or that, but if anyone calls you stupid for that... That's... Just not right.
Agreed. Calling people stupid is, in my opinion, just wrong in most cases. I think it's much better to discuss the religion(s) instead without the insultive words (in a dialog or polylog).
It's also much more effective, because then the persons you're discussing will might even want to listen to your arguments and perhaps even question their own religion.
I am an atheist and if anyone called me stupid for being it I'd confront them with their religion immmediately. If they think I'm stupid they would at least have to tell me why and hear my arguments before I'd take it serious.
I can't take insultive words serious before I know there is a good reason behind them. And they aren't showing any reason by just calling him stupid, so I'd say that it's wrong of them (but hopefully not harmful).
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Answer to a post in another topic (http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php/topic,848.0.html):
Somone (WHO I TRUST!!!!!!) told me that to God, a day is really a thousands of years. So Earth created in- A LONG TIME- is 6 days to him.
But NeutronStar, if we assume one day in the creation week is in fact 1,000 years, how can the plants created on day three survive without the Sun, created on day four, for 1,000 years?
Anyways, even though you really trust him, remember that it's still a belief and that it's what he believes - it's not something he knows. The human brain doesn't separate facts from beliefs, it's something you do as you speak, but your brain works with them in the same way. He didn't lie, he didn't want to lie, of course, but it's just what he believes. :)
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Catholic.
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Answer to a post in another topic (http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php/topic,848.0.html):
Somone (WHO I TRUST!!!!!!) told me that to God, a day is really a thousands of years. So Earth created in- A LONG TIME- is 6 days to him.
But NeutronStar, if we assume one day in the creation week is in fact 1,000 years, how can the plants created on day three survive without the Sun, created on day four, for 1,000 years?
Anyways, even though you really trust him, remember that it's still a belief and that it's what he believes - it's not something he knows. The human brain doesn't separate facts from beliefs, it's something you do as you speak, but your brain works with them in the same way. He didn't lie, he didn't want to lie, of course, but it's just what he believes. :)
I'm not saying exactly 1,000 years (which would be creationist (right?)) but whatever.
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Sorry, I thought you were saying that since God created the universe in 6 days, and one day to him is a thousand years to us, that he then created the universe in 6,000 years, each day being 1,000 years (or so).
If we multiply the creationist assumption that the universe is 6,000 years old by 1,000, we only get 6,000,000, nothing compared to 13,700,000,000. But as I said before, I don't think it would work. But ok, you didn't believe it anyways. :P
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I dont believe in religion but i do believe in god or some higher intelligence, but i also am infatuated with quantam physics and its whole "observer" thing and i also believe that the only reason we are here is because we noticed that we were here... ;) and since the bible (which people seem to take abit to much at face value) says 7 days it took to create the universe who really knows what the means? the bible was more about spreading the message and they probably put that there because it fit them for the time. ( this is all therotical ofc :D ) and just like the guy who wrote Hyperspace, we could be the result of a past universe of humans saving themselves from the destruction of thier universe, but im not to sure about anything now....
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Interesting, but why do you believe in a god? I just mean, what does it justify the existence of? If something is required to justify our existence, then I assume something more is required to justify the existence of the one who created us, and then we will end up with infinite gods.
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Chicken or the Egg? Puts you in the same position, eh? ;)
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Yes, I like the chicken and the egg, because evolution explains it. :)
First, the single-cellular organisms copied themselves. Then, they grew more advanced, and gained the big variety. Some early ancestor to the chicken evolved the ability to make a membrane around the chicken it would be going to... Bear? What do you call it... But then, a harder membrane seemed to increase the chance of survival for the chicken, and those would have a higher chance of survival, and therefore a higher chance of having their genes passing on. So the nature selects eggs. The chicken slowly evolved into a chicken with the ability to lay eggs over time.
I am not completely sure about what I wrote, so I couldn't go into detail, because I haven't studied it, but this is how it might have happened.
Perhaps that's why some people believe that universes "evolve", by passing their physical laws etc. on to the next universe, which it produces in black holes. So, "universal selection" would select universes producing the most black holes, = universes with stars = universes which also allow life. The physical laws can then be changed randomly (but usually not much) while the next universe is getting started.
It sounds strange to me, and of course these things are not parts of the evolution theory, but I think it's interesting. I think there are other explanations that are more likely however, until we begin to find information codes in the universe. :P
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the problem is that universes don't reproduce with other universes and they don't die because of external causes...
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Evolution can still happen (I know there's no evidence for this kind of evolution, but let's just say there is :P).
If you have ten universes, each with different physical laws, and three of them have physical laws allowing stars to form, and some of these stars turn into black holes, which causes new universes to form (there isn't evidence for this either, but let's just say there is :P), where the new universes forming have the same physical laws as the parent universe, with slight changes. Then the universes with most black holes will be selected. :P
Anyways, this is just an idea, which might soon make me sound like I'm crazy. I don't believe in it. :P
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Aren't there like a million universes in my room right now? I mean those 11 dimensional Calibai-Yau manifolds.
Universes transferring physical laws seems reasonable if they pass through each other. Like in the Eridanus Supervoid, where we might be colliding with a universe.
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To continue the debate from another thread (http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php/topic,1267.0.html):
God did not create the universe, because a person cannot do that. Why do people think god created the universe?
To answer this anyways: No one said "God" was a person.
God doesn't exist, and don't be a non-atheist.
Whether God exists or not, that doesn't give you the right to tell us what to believe.
Fight! ;D
Nah. But Deoxy99, please remember that everyone are allowed to believe what they want to. We have to respect each other's beliefs. :)
Btw a non-atheist is called a theist (or deist, if the person believes in a god that doesn't interact with the universe). :)
Personally, I think:
1) If the universe requires a creator, that creator must require one as well. That will just lead to an infinite regress of creators having to create each other, never stopping.
2) That it would be easier to believe that the universe has always been here rather than believing that a creator is required for the universe, then stating that the creator has always been here.
3) That an all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing god cannot exist. It would know how to prevent all evil and do it if it were all-powerful and all-loving. It could have created humans with only good desires. And I also find that god incompatible with for example handicapped people, people born in poverty, autists and other people who are born with problems they cannot choose or change.
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For an answer to 3. Its freedom of choice otherwise we would be robots.
I would have to say you make sense for 1, but if there is no creator, what caused the Big Bang if the was nothing at all. No time, then how would it advance to explode? ow was it created then if there was no creator?
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I think it's possible if:
1) Either the total energy of the universe is zero. Laurence Krauss explains it in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo).
2) That the universe has always existed, and that a previous universe or a previous state of it caused the Big Bang.
In either case, it should be possible that our universe is not the only one existing.
This could make us wonder why our universe has forces that allow life. But if our universe didn't have forces that allowed us to exist, we wouldn't be here to wonder about why they existed. :P I think that the forces are set randomly during the Big Bang, as in the standard model where the forces seperate, and that there could probably be many universes with forces not allowing stars and life to form.
As for the answer to the answer to 3:
We have freedom of choise, but we still have certain desires. Many humans want power, sometimes at the expense of other humans. Some humans consider themselves more important than other people. An omnipotent god would be able to create us with better or perfect desires, while we could still have freedom of choise.
If we have choises with our current morals, we would also have choises with different morals. The morals would just affect the choises we make.
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I'm mostly a spiritual person, not religious.
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3) That an all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing god cannot exist. It would know how to prevent all evil and do it if it were all-powerful and all-loving. It could have created humans with only good desires. And I also find that god incompatible with for example handicapped people, people born in poverty, autists and other people who are born with problems they cannot choose or change.
Of course religion (christian) already answered this questions in the form of a mith: Eden
Firstly humans (Adam and Eva) where living in Eden, a perfect world, but because of the original sin, they were chased away.
Moreover (always according to the Christian religion) God do not have power to our will, so it's our fault if we have wrong thoughts. It's up to us having a good behaviour to go back to Paradise.
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3) That an all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing god cannot exist. It would know how to prevent all evil and do it if it were all-powerful and all-loving. It could have created humans with only good desires. And I also find that god incompatible with for example handicapped people, people born in poverty, autists and other people who are born with problems they cannot choose or change.
Of course religion (christian) already answered this questions in the form of a mith: Eden
Firstly humans (Adam and Eva) where living in Eden, a perfect world, but because of the original sin, they were chased away.
Moreover (always according to the Christian religion) God do not have power to our will, so it's our fault if we have wrong thoughts. It's up to us having a good behaviour to go back to Paradise.
But that doesn't explain it, because then the god created the humans knowing that they would sin, and knowing that its own design wouldn't meet his expectations.
By the way, I can't find the logic in the myth anyways. What's the meaning of creating humans who become tempted by a snake, which the god didn't want, but created anyways, to eat a fruit of a forbidden tree, which the god didn't want, but created anyways. Why create all that mess if it didn't want it? Remove the tree, remove the snake/satan or remove the temptation for "bad things" and there would be no problem. Or did the god want the problem? He knew it would happen. He was omnipotent and all-knowing.
And if the god doesn't have the power over our will, it is not omnipotent.
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Infact I'm atheist...
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Infact I'm atheist...
I know. :) You said that earlier in the discussion. I was just responding to the arguments. :)
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If some random guy today claims to be a prophet and gathers followers, nobody considers it a 'proper religion'.
It usually ends badly with a mass suicide or a compound being stormed, or both.
Why is that, when most people agree that we must 'respect the belief systems of other people'?
Why are the crazy ideas of a contemporary person automatically invalid, while nearly everyone accepts the crazy ideas of an ancient person as the absolute truth?
In fact, schizophrenics have prophetic visions on a daily basis and often write down things that are no more or less deranged than what's in the bible. Why are they not worshipped?
What is the substantive difference between modern ravings and ancient ones?
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So true. Why should we respect crazy people like these (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCmzXZu70jY)? I mean, if they didn't have the word 'religion' to hide behind, I'd simply call them sick nazis (don't get me wrong - Hitler was religious too (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwL7m1n6Aak), but nazism isn't a religion, and we usually don't respect nazism because we see how crazy it is).
Pat Condell - Aggressive Atheism (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjO4duhMRZk)
I've been touched by His Noodly Appendage! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk8EANdpAj0)
Couldn't resist posting it, sorry. :P
And just a note: I know most religious people aren't so extreme. Of course I think they should be respected, when they show respect. But if they ask me to respect their religion, I can only take it as a joke, because their religion offers me no respect at all.
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i agree completely. Thess what i really hate people hide behind religion so that they can get away with being racist, sexist, gayist (or whatever you want to call it) @$$holes. i mean seriously why do they even care what other people do? its not like they're hurting anyone but themselves, and even thats debatable.
And on another note, why cant science and religion exist together? there is absolutely nothing in the bible that i know of that goes against science in my view. For example, take the creation story according to the bible god created the world in six days. but there were no humans around to agree (or disagree) with that, only god. But god is timeless six days to him could be 100's of millions of years to us or vice versa. now how he did it: the bible says the earth was shapeless and dark of course it was, it was just some random particles in a nebula with no sun for it to orbit. next: "Let There Be Light" the sun ignited. next the separation of light and dark, the dust was cleared by solar winds. The next couple of verses dont really make sense to me (about the creation of heaven). next the earth coalesces fron the PP disk and gets its ocean. then volcanoes form land. next come plant (though they would be microbes, but this was origionally made for an audience that had no idea what a microbe was so they used plants that they would have heard of) formation of stars / sun/moon: for the stars /sun the athmosphere became clear (i believe it is thought to have been very cloudy and hazy like titan). the moon confuses me because it formed earlier but it makes sense that if you couldnt see the sun you also couldnt see the moon. next formation of sea life. and so on and so on there discrepencies here and there but you have to remember it was written at least 3000 years ago. translation errors would be expected. and yes as you can tell, im a christian but i also believe in science evolution and other things of that sort
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gayist
Homophobic. :)
But in response to the rest, well, what's the point of saying you create something in six days if it isn't six days anyways? :P Wouldn't it be useless to tell us you create it in six days without saying what a day is?
I mean, a day is the time it takes for Earth to rotate once, the length of a day is based on Earth and is changing as the rotation of Earth slows over time (it's slowed by The Moon).
Also, what about Big Bang? That's not even mentioned in the bible. We know Big Bang happened 13.75 billion years ago, The Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years ago and The Earth about 4,567,200,000 years ago. The first life on Earth appeared 3.5 billion years ago, and was very simple - in fact, multicellular life is only 610 million years old.
That's what Science says, I don't see it fit completely into the six days. The 'heavens' are 13.75 billion years old, Earth is only 4.6 billion years old. :)
In Genesis 1:11-13, on the third "day", the christian god creates plants, but he didn't create 'the two great lights' [Sun and Moon] before 1:16, the fourth day. So you can check how long a day can be at most - the amount of time plants can survive without sunlight to fuel their photosynthesis.
Also, if a god wanted us to read his words and is omnipotent, how come he gave us a book that required translations by imperfect humans?
And the bit about them caring about what other people do... That's also based in the bible - leviticus 20:13 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+20:13&version=NIV). Gays should be killed if they 'lie with a man as one lies with a woman', according to the bible.
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The total absence of mention of microbes in Genesis is a dead giveaway that God can't have had anything whatsoever to do with the writing of scripture. So, if it was just people writing it, and they can't claim divine channeling because of the microbe issue and a multitude of other mistakes, how can there be anything holy about it. It can have no better claim to the truth than other ancient religious writings from other parts of the world which were likewise clearly written by people. By far the majority of those religions claim to be either the only true one or the purest of them, depending on the level of tolerance inherent in them. Most of them claim more or less direct authorship of their scriptures by their god or gods. Where, then, is the logic in preferring any one of them over the other? All of them have equivalent credentials. For example, nothing makes it logical that Christianity should be any better than Hinduism.
If I were to read a book that really is the inspired word of God himself, I'd expect to be completely blown away in amazement and awe. Instead, all I see is a poorly written, severely bigoted and hateful mishmash of archaic tribal ideas.
It's not generally a much better situation with the holy books of other religions. They, too, are full of bigotry and hate.
It is all so obviously the work of human beings with a power agenda, and it has worked splendidly throughout history engendering horrific wars and genocide and persecution, and has invariably made the priesthood powerful and wealthy. That is the true purpose of religion; to have people follow without question in return for nebulous promises of a nice afterlife provided they are willing to suffer through this life for the cause.
Snake oil salesmen have nothing on priests. Religion is the biggest scam of all time. Pure and simple.
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Well said Laura. :)
Yes, if it were the word of a god, there surely couldn't be so many contradictions (http://thethinkingatheist.com/bible_contradictions.html) either (This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3g6mXLEKk) also shows some of the contradictions in a funny way). Here are some examples of what you believe if you believe the bible is true:
• You believe in dragons. Yes, the authors of scripture speak about dragons as real creatures.
(Deuteronomy 32:33, Job 30:29, Psalm 74:13, Isaiah 27:1, Jeremiah 9:11, Micah 1:8 )
• You believe in the Satyr, a creature of Greek mythology. It is a man with a goat’s legs, ears and horns. (Isaiah 13:21, Isaiah 34:34)
• You believe in the gigantic sea monster known as a Leviathan. (Job 3:8, Job 41, Psalm 74:14, Psalm 104:24-26, Isaiah 27:1)
Ironically, ancient Rabbinic studies say that God created two Leviathans on the fifth day of creation (Yalkut, Gen. 12), then had to kill the female to keep the pair from spawning and killing everything on the earth. (Rashi’s Commentary on Talmud Baba Bathra 74b)
• You believe in unicorns, referenced no less than 8 times in the bible. (Numbers 23:22, Numbers 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, Job 39:9-10, Psalm 22:21, Psalm 29:6, Psalm 92:10, Isaiah 34:7)
• You believe in the Cockatrice, a serpent hatched from a rooster’s egg that can kill with a glance. (Jeremiah 8:17, Isaiah 11:8, Isaiah 59:5, Isaiah 14: 29)
• You believe the earth is flat. The authors of scripture constantly reference the “four corners of the earth,” as if the world is a level plane. In fact, Daniel 4:11 speaks of a vision of a tree growing so tall, it touched the sky, making visible the “ends of the earth. Job 38:13 talks of the world being shaken “by the edges.” (Isaiah 11:12, Jeremiah 16:19, Revelation 7:1)
You also believe that the entire (flat) earth can be seen from “an exceeding high mountain,” as when Satan tempted Jesus in Matthew 4 by showing him “all the kingdoms of the world.”
• You believe that the earth doesn’t rotate around the sun. It is “fixed” and “immovable.” (1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, Psalm 104:5, Isaiah 45:18)
• You believe in giants. (Genesis 6:4)
• You believe in witches and sorcery. (Exodus 22:18, Deuteronomy 18:9-14, 2 Chronicles 33:6, Galatians 5:19-21)
• You believe that stars (suns) can “fall unto the earth.” (Revelation 6:12-14)
• You believe that insects like the grasshopper, locust and cricket have FOUR legs, not six. (Leviticus 11:20-23)
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okay one thing at a time
dragons: could easily explained by exaggeration, or a metaphor (such as the beast in revalations)
satyr: I looked it up on the NIV version (as it uses the most modern language) were is the passage word for word: But desert creatures will lie there,
jackals will fill her houses;
there the owls will dwell,
and there the wild goats will leap about. and there is no isaiah 34:34
leviathan: could be another metaphor and science has never proven that it doesnt exist, just like the giant squid
unicorn: NIV states: 22 God brought them out of Egypt;
they have the strength of a wild ox. every other passage you posted says wild ox here (and i can see that you used probably the KJV) one give away is that it says hornS of a unicorn.
cockatrice: the NIV calls them vipers.
Another example of word meaning changing over time
flat earth: remember at the time they had no idea that southern Africa, the Americas, east Asia, Australia, Antarctica, etc. etc. even exist so to them the world might as well have been flat.
four corners: even today we say things like ends of the earth, even the earth has no ends its just an expression. and about the seeing all the empires thing they only knew about the ones in (and around) the holy land it is possible i think to see land controlled by every empire known then from a very tall mountain.
immovable earth: it does seem like it from the surface. remember the bible is not a scientific text
giants: this is what the NIV says, The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. okay i have no idea what it means you win this one
sorcery: in ancient Hebrew the word for witchcraft/sorcery had a very different meaning according to that definition it is actually something most teenagers i know practice, it is to be kind to someones face and insult them behind their back.
falling stars: why'd you even put this in? they're shooting stars, as in rocks from space burning up as they fall to earth.
four legs: that im not so sure of it doesn't seem to be a metaphor and we all know that they do have six legs. although when you look at them on the ground or on a leaf the kinda do look like they have four legs. and this is only saying what they can and can't eat so if most people at the time thought they had four legs it would say so too so they would know what it was talking about.
remember the book was written for an audience thousands of years ago, if it had started talking about microbes and other stuff people would have passed it off as the writings of a lunatic and the author would probably have been killed and any and all copies of his works destroyed. and if he did manage to sneak it in somehow and we did find it there would be no need for faith then, and that's the whole point of religion YOU NEED FAITH.
so lets just agree that we will believe what we want to and nothing any one says will change that. and here's another reason to have faith, if i'm wrong and there is no god that just means that i have wasted a few hours a week going to church and praying. i get to die relatively happy thinking that i will go to heaven. if i dont believe in god and im wrong, i get to have a bit more time and less brain power, but when i die ill spend all of eternity being tortured in hell.
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You must realize, that actually, the point is God told these people, who then wrote it down FIRST in Babylonian or some language. Thus, translations might change it a bit too!
Keys: people, translation
EDIT: Sorry space guy. Didn't read yours, but mine sums it up right here. lol
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I'm Atheist.
About Genesis the problems starts at the very beginning:
Genesis 1:1-2
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness {was} upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
But this is a impossible situation.
If the Earth did not have form so this means that its mass was not sufficient to form the actual spheroid body, so its gravity would be too small (on average just over 500 km bodies can have spherical or spheroid shape) to keep water in surface or atmosphere about it.
And according to Bible, the atmosphere was established subsequently by a "watershed" that already existed, but the water, without atmospheric pressure, it would have simply vaporized, there is nothing to divide or where the "spirit of God" skim in his routine flights.
So the Genesis already started wrong. Not even their division into eras, as some "moderates Creationists", save the issue, quite the contrary, it would aggravate the problem.
[ ]´s
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Also, just finished what space guy 1 said, and your last statement makes sense. Perfect time for a 4 way chart thingy.
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dragons: could easily explained by exaggeration, or a metaphor (such as the beast in revalations)
It seems odd to use dragons as an exaggeration, but maybe that's just me. Take for example Job 30:29, where Job says "I'm a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.". He mentions a fantasy being (the dragon) in a sentence, using it in the same way as a real being (the owl). I don't buy it as a metaphor, but if you believe it, ok.
In Psalm 74:13, god apparently divided the sea by his strength and broke the heads of the dragons in the waters. Again, I won't buy that as simply being a metaphor or exaggeration, but it's subjective, so...
satyr: I looked it up on the NIV version (as it uses the most modern language)
Modern language is fine, but I don't see why they suddenly have to replace all the fantasy beings with real beings now that we've found out that the fantasy beings probably only were fantasy beings...
were is the passage word for word: But desert creatures will lie there,
jackals will fill her houses;
there the owls will dwell,
and there the wild goats will leap about.
As I mentioned, in the old versions, at least KJV, the leaping goats were dancing satyrs.
and there is no isaiah 34:34
Sorry, I meant Isaiah 34:14.
leviathan: could be another metaphor and science has never proven that it doesnt exist, just like the giant squid
Science has never proven there is no teapot orbiting Mars, that there are no gods, tooth faries, witches, satyrs, dragons, Loch Ness monsters etc. You can't observe lack of existence, so you can only disprove existence by logic, like a two-dimensional cube etc. But the burden of proof is on you who claim that there are such beings, not on the Scientists to disprove them.
The whole chapter Job 41 is used to describe Leviathan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan
In Psalm 74:14, just after breaking the heads of the dragons, he breaks the heads (note that it has multiple heads) of Leviathan:
"Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness."
If it were just a metaphor, I'd assume it wouldn't become meat afterwards.
And later in 104:24-26 leviathan seems to be described as a real being again:
"O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein."
In Isaiah 27:1, god apparently decides to kill leviathan again: "In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea."
In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.unicorn: NIV states: 22 God brought them out of Egypt;
they have the strength of a wild ox. every other passage you posted says wild ox here (and i can see that you used probably the KJV)[/quote]
Again, it seems like they simply replace the animals once they find out they probably don't exist.
In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
one give away is that it says hornS of a unicorn.
It says horns of unicorns, both are plural:
"His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh."
Same about Psalm 22:21.
cockatrice: the NIV calls them vipers.
Another example of word meaning changing over time
The meaning of the word (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockatrice) certainly hasn't changed, but apparently it depends on how you translate the Hebrew versions.
flat earth: remember at the time they had no idea that southern Africa, the Americas, east Asia, Australia, Antarctica, etc. etc. even exist so to them the world might as well have been flat.
So the bible is apparently not the true word of god. I mean, the god could at least have got the facts correct in the only book he was going to give humanity. People in the bible are imagined to have spoken with god, so surely he could've made the message clear to us and the facts correct.
http://www.goatstar.org/the-bibles-flat-earthsolid-sky-dome-universe/#flat%20earth
In multiple places, people who should've spoken with god speak about Earth as being flat.
four corners: even today we say things like ends of the earth, even the earth has no ends its just an expression.
Yes, but the fact that we use the expression today doesn't have to mean that it wasn't taken as fact earlier, as you might know scientists who claimed The Earth was round were killed by the church in the start.
and about the seeing all the empires thing they only knew about the ones in (and around) the holy land it is possible i think to see land controlled by every empire known then from a very tall mountain.
Jesus was taken to a mountain from which he could see every kingdom of The Earth by satan. So are you saying Jesus only knew about the few kingdoms around the "holy land"?
immovable earth: it does seem like it from the surface. remember the bible is not a scientific text
Certainly not, that's exactly what I'm trying to show people, that the bible is a book of fiction as any other "holy" book and that we should not quote it for truth, kill in the name of it, seek our morals in it etc. :)
giants: this is what the NIV says, The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. okay i have no idea what it means you win this one
Apparently, giants were replaced by 'Nephilim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim)' in NIV. I've never heard the word before, but it seems like it's the same thing.
sorcery: in ancient Hebrew the word for witchcraft/sorcery had a very different meaning according to that definition it is actually something most teenagers i know practice, it is to be kind to someones face and insult them behind their back.
I don't think these verses (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/interp/magic.html) refer to insulting people behind their back. The stories in the verses clearly contain or are about magic, try looking them up.
falling stars: why'd you even put this in? they're shooting stars, as in rocks from space burning up as they fall to earth.
Revelation 6:12-14:
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
The sixth seal is opened and there is a great earthquake, the sun becomes black, and the moon red, the stars fall from heaven, and mountains and islands move around. The whole scene seems absurd, and again you can interpret the stars as a metaphor of shooting stars (but remember, when we long ago began to say 'shooting stars', we thought, like in the bible, that they were not meteorites, but really falling stars). Just because we know what it is today and still use the old words for it, it doesn't mean the old usage of the old words gain the modern and known meaning. As you said, the bible isn't a book of Science, and should not be taken as truth.
The sixth seal is opened and there is a great earthquake, the sun becomes black, and the moon red, the stars fall from heaven, and mountains and islands move around.four legs: that im not so sure of it doesn't seem to be a metaphor and we all know that they do have six legs. although when you look at them on the ground or on a leaf the kinda do look like they have four legs. and this is only saying what they can and can't eat so if most people at the time thought they had four legs it would say so too so they would know what it was talking about.[/quote]
But if the god who apparently inspired the book cared about truth, he could tell them the truth and show them that the book was more than fiction written by humans. This video shows my point very well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOfjkl-3SNE
The christian god could just have given us like one single fact we could later look back at to see that it wasn't fiction. Something that could've helped us advance, rather than walking on water and all that stuff that doesn't prove anything or help humanity advance.
remember the book was written for an audience thousands of years ago, if it had started talking about microbes and other stuff people would have passed it off as the writings of a lunatic and the author would probably have been killed and any and all copies of his works destroyed. and if he did manage to sneak it in somehow and we did find it there would be no need for faith then, and that's the whole point of religion YOU NEED FAITH.
And why is faith better than evidence...? What I'm saying is that I don't get the central point of religion. Blind faith flies you into buildings, causes crusades, genocides, hate, promotes repression, makes people pray for cures rather than using our hospitals, makes people become close minded and stops them from thinking, stopping our progress, while Science makes us advance, gives us Technology, medicine and real answers about this awesome universe that is so much more fantastic than any religious shepherds could ever imagine thousands of years ago. As Richard Dawkins said, "Science replaces private prejudice with publicly verifyable evidence.". The point of religion is not good and is polluting this world more than any fossil fuel could ever dream of, and religions are fiction we should not have any faith in, but accept on the basis of evidence, like we should do with everything else. That's my point. :)
so lets just agree that we will believe what we want to and nothing any one says will change that.
If we can believe what we want, we're not believing on the basis of evidence, because evidence should convince people. If we decide that nothing anyone says will change our beliefs, we're being close minded and ignorant. If anyone can provide any evidence for their claims, I'll gladly accept them, but until then, I can't take it serious when it offers no evidence and I can't respect it when it offers no respect.
and here's another reason to have faith, if i'm wrong and there is no god that just means that i have wasted a few hours a week going to church and praying. i get to die relatively happy thinking that i will go to heaven. if i dont believe in god and im wrong, i get to have a bit more time and less brain power, but when i die ill spend all of eternity being tortured in hell.
Pascal's Wager. At least I didn't hear The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics this time. ;)
Sorry, what if you're wrong about all the other gods in the world? Will you then go to Mosques, synagogues and all the other places every week?
And there's more. Imagine I had an imaginary friend who would also torture you for eternity after your death. I have no evidence for this claim, but require you to accept it on faith. And this imaginary friend requires you to sacrifice 90% of all the money you get and earn, 85% of all the food you get/find/buy/etc., not sleep for more than 2 hours a day, not talk to people with brown hair, not wear dark shoes, and I could go on. It is not impossible that this is true, and even though I'd say christianity can impossibly be true, even if it were possibly true with a tiny chance, I'd never waste one single second on it. I'd call it the coward's way out, and the god would know I didn't believe in him anyways. I don't know if you can, but I can't just believe what I want to. Not that I'd want to believe in any religion.
Here is "The Skeptic's Wager":
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but...will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” - Marcus Aurelius
Also, just finished what space guy 1 said, and your last statement makes sense. Perfect time for a 4 way chart thingy.
Hope my answer does too?
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If you keep talking about this, I'll probably start believing in god.
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If you keep talking about this, I'll probably start believing in god.
Why?
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If you keep talking about this, I'll probably start believing in god.
Why?
I'm getting overloaded with religion and stuff.
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I'm getting overloaded with religion and stuff.
It's your own choise, but if I'd overload you with atheism, would you then not believe?
Not that I would, but getting overloaded has nothing to do with truth. My post may have overloaded many people who don't have patience to read it all, think about it and respond, but in short, my post was against belief in god, if that makes you stop believing. :P
Nah, I hope it doesn't. Just think about what you read and you'll probably be fine.
Here are some funny vids about free will I just found. I found this great quote too, on YouTube:
”No matter what spin people ever put on it and no matter how Christians try to sugar coat it it all comes down to this:
Worship me......... or burn ”
- ClintonClinton33
So here they are:
Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtSM2oVy_E)
Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv9IvCpiHxA)
Part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0wSjJAsrAk)
(Each video doesn't require you to watch any of the other two.)
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btw, Where you said, why not make it clear or whatever, he didn't want us to be lazy. YOU MUST FIND YOUR OWN INTERPRETATION, and plus, maybe it didn't stick in their minds, they may have wrote it differently.
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I'm a Scientologist.
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if i'm wrong and there is no god that just means that i have wasted a few hours a week going to church and praying. i get to die relatively happy thinking that i will go to heaven. if i dont believe in god and im wrong, i get to have a bit more time and less brain power, but when i die ill spend all of eternity being tortured in hell.
Yes, because God loves you!
By the way, did you realize that Hell in the form that you describe is a medieval invention?
The whole eternal torture, fire, brimstone, and so on. Invented by popes.
The original meaning is simply eternity in a self-imposed separation from God.
Apparently, this didn't seem quite awful enough to the average peasant, so stronger measures were put in place :)
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So are you pro-religion, or not? I don't get you completley.
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So are you pro-religion, or not? I don't get you completley.
Me? I think it's the single most harmful activity humans have ever engaged in.
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i actually agree there. although if you mean for everything it would be releasing greenhouse gasses, but thats another thread altogether.
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I believe in god, but i belive, he just went like "Ope, time to make a universe!!!!! (Push universe button) there we go :)" Then he just watched it grow for entertainment
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He was not meant to interact with us. Just help us (thus not telling us the perfect everything), maybe he even told us wrong, to test how smart we were to prove it wrong...
I don't know.
But it sounds good. :)
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btw, Where you said, why not make it clear or whatever, he didn't want us to be lazy. YOU MUST FIND YOUR OWN INTERPRETATION,
I don't see why it would make us lazy that he made his words clear. If he did, we would have a reason to follow them, and the world could be as he wanted. But he doesn't want people to believe. He's an omniscient, omnipotent god, so he knows every single result of every single action he could ever think of, including that the majority of people will not believe in him given the minds he is imagined to have created and the ancient myths and story books he gave to describe him.
The christian god really doesn't seem omni-anything. Here is a quote (sorry for all these quotes, but sometimes other people can just explain things better than me :P):
The Bible is a comedy of errors. God creates the world with only 1 person...and that turns out to be a mistake, so he makes a companion. Two people in the world, one rule...whoops, that failed. Let's kick them out and make life more difficult, in the hopes that this will work...whoops, that failed. OK, let's drown everyone on the planet except for the one most righteous family...whoops, that failed. Let's confuse their languages...fail. Let's pick just one small group as the chosen group...fail. Let's ignore them for a while...fail. Let's pick and guide one king...fail.
Let's send ourselves down and take human form in order to sacrifice ourselves to ourselves as a loophole for a rule that we made...epic fail.
The god of the Bible has no better understanding of morals, human nature or reason than the backward band of bronze-age buffoons who wrote the book. Curious, that.
By the way, I really think the most lazy thing a human brain can do is to say "goddidit", rather than actually trying to find a natural explanation for it.
and plus, maybe it didn't stick in their minds, they may have wrote it differently.
But in large parts of the book, they have direct contact with their god and can speak with him, and his actions are clearly affecting the world, like when he drowned every single person on the planet, including babies and all the animals except for two or seven of every "kind" (depending on which verse of the bible you believe in). Or like the story of Jephthah (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt66kbYmXXk).
He was not meant to interact with us. Just help us (thus not telling us the perfect everything), maybe he even told us wrong, to test how smart we were to prove it wrong...
I don't know.
I think he probably just doesn't exist, and that's the reason why we don't see any signs of him. But I've said that before. :P
I really don't see how god could've helped us, since what he has resulted in has been:
1: Dozens of genocides, the slaughtering of every single person in many cities around the "holy land".
2: The crusades.
3: After the christians took control of Europe, they pretty much stopped all Scientific progress for half a millennia. Imagine where we could've been now.
4: After the christians took control of Europe, it resulted in the most cruel punishments for things that really shouldn't be crimes, or are completely imaginary. People were burned and killed for being "witches", gays, atheists or simply for saying that The Earth was round.
5: The bible has inspired hate against many people. If you see what the nazis did, they simply took all the people the church had promoted hate against for centuries - the jews and gays for example. Without the church, that had probably never happened. And the hate continues today. Also, it tells us that men and women are not equal.
6: If the bible really was a holy book, it could simply have told us slavery was wrong and real morals things maybe along with a few facts we could use to progress, so it could help us like you said. But that's really not what it has done, I hope you can see it. I hope I'm not offending you by writing this, sorry if you get that feeling. :)
i actually agree there. although if you mean for everything it would be releasing greenhouse gasses, but thats another thread altogether.
Seriously, we'd be far ahead of the problem of greenhouse gasses five houndred years ago if religion didn't exist and hadn't stopped Science, not to mention the crusades, the killing of nearly every single native American in America, the killing of so many innocent people and all this hate.
"Religion has polluted this world far more than any fossil fuel could ever dream of." - Pat Condell
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the world could be as he wanted.
free will
Thanks. :)
Sorry to tell you, but I said that to myself. I said "I don't really know, but it sounds good." :-\
You do have good arguments though.
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free will
It will always boil down to "worship or burn". It's not really free will, it's like asking you to pay taxes or go to jail for the rest of your life... So the choise is completely up to you, right? I posted these three vids yesterday, and I think they explain my point very well:
Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtSM2oVy_E), part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv9IvCpiHxA), part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0wSjJAsrAk).
Secondly, I don't think most people can just believe whatever they want. Even if I wanted to believe in a religion (which I would never want to), I still couldn't, because I can't just believe what I want, I require evidence.
And finally, what about those who haven't had the option to believe because they had never heard about your religion? The native Americans, Africans, Australians and Asians for example. They had never heard about christianity before the christian countries colonized them. You live in America, but imagine you were a native American, still living here, and that the Europeans had never discovered America. Does it really seem logical that you should be tortured for eternity after death, when you had no chance of knowing about that god?
You're welcome to respond to the rest of my answers if you want to, but I'll give you free will... Without consequences.
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It's interesting that Nazis are frequently pulled off the shelf and dusted off as an example of how badly wrong things can go when atheists are given power.
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That makes sense about if you didn't know about it. Some other sub-religion of Christianity says there are levels, like 5 or 4 or something...
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That makes sense about if you didn't know about it. Some other sub-religion of Christianity says there are levels, like 5 or 4 or something...
Levels of what?
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It's interesting that Nazis are frequently pulled off the shelf and dusted off as an example of how badly wrong things can go when atheists are given power.
And it is also often claimed that he did all his acts in "the name of evolution". Hitler denied evolution, and banned The Origin of Species from Germany.
Yes, it's doubtlessly the worst example ever. I usually show them this video, then they must get the point:
Hitler Was NOT Atheist! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwL7m1n6Aak).
That makes sense about if you didn't know about it. Some other sub-religion of Christianity says there are levels, like 5 or 4 or something...
But is there really any evidence to suggest this? ;) I mean, there's no evidence for christianity in the first place, so why even begin to invent levels within hell to make it less incompatible with logic and reality?
What about Noah's Ark for example. It is said to have contained two of every "kind". Even though "kind" would be translated into "art" in my language, where "kind" and "species" are the same word, never mind that. How would a single man, Noah, be able to collect two of every "kind" of animal from every continent in the world when he was 600 years old, and be able to build a ship big enough to contain all these "kinds" of animals?
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Ah, levels of hell. Supposedly there are 7 heavens and 9 hells, all thanks to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
The following is a diagram of Hell according to the writings of Dante, which were endorsed by the Catholic church (hardly an obscure christian sect).
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Barack Obama has really made some awesome statements about religion. I don't know if you've heard them, I hadn't before now, but watch this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av3H0_7HgSg).
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within hell
wrong. They aren't within it. But that is one of the levels.
I think there is heaven, one below it, an in the middle, hell, and then a worse one. Or something. idk
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Okay, but... I think there's no heaven and no hell. ;) How can you say I'm wrong about something that we have absolutely no reason to believe exists? :P
I mean, that's the default stance until there's reason to believe it, that it doesn't exist. Just like tooth faires. So why do you believe that?
And still, even if there really are levels within all of this, I still don't see how god could justify throwing those who have never had a chance to know anything about him into any level that is bad.
I really don't see why he is so obsessed with people worshipping him. He should care a lot more about if people are nice people and stuff like that, instead of being a celestial dictator.
Anyways, I don't really want to spend a lot of time on my answers if people just pick a small bit of them and respond to that... It's annoying to spend a lot of time, maybe hours on a post and then have most of it ignored. It's completely okay if people don't have time to consider and respond to all of it, but it'd be nice if they at least just said that that's the reason. :)
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I didn't mean you were TRULY wrong, I meant that what your idea of what I was trying to say was wrong.
And, I'm getting tired of this topic. All that's in here is the same thing... the past page. Back and forth, same thing...
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I have a valid statement. I think it is almost ALL a metaphor. Even the creation of the universe.
In the beginning it was all black. = It was mostly black, we are talking about the solar system not being there.
7 days = A VERY LONG TIME, but short in cosmic times.
See?
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I have a valid statement. I think it is almost ALL a metaphor. Even the creation of the universe.
In the beginning it was all black. = It was mostly black, we are talking about the solar system not being there.
7 days = A VERY LONG TIME, but short in cosmic times.
See?
Well, then you can probably make any book look correct, including all the other "holy" books? :)
Do you mean that seven days is a metaphor for a long period of time, like millions or billions of years? As I said earlier, the order in which the life came doesn't work out, for example the plants would have no Sun for their photosynthesis for a whole day, how long that may ever be.
But if it's all metaphorical, what can we use it for, and how can we see that christianity is the true religion?
Anyways, I can only wonder why wasting "holy" scripture space on metaphors which often have nothing to do with truth. As I said earlier, I don't buy that all of those mistakes are just metaphors, maybe a few, but not many of them.
I'm not completely sure if I've understood what you mean about the seven days correctly.
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The "it's all metaphor" interpretation is a copout.
For it to work, you need the á priori assumption that the book must be true. Then follows the work of interpreting and twisting it until it fits the facts to your level of requirement to suspend disbelief.
Just like it is with the cryptic writings of Nostradamus, it can be twisted to mean anything, as long as the reader believes that there really is truth in there.
Isn't it more reasonable to posit that the book means to say exactly what it in fact does say?
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you.
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*leaves topic* :(
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There's something I have to say. All of this religion stuff, in fact, there is one religion that sounds... True. I'll prove it to you in this video I made yesterday, when supernatural powers decided to step into my Universe Sandbox simulation in March:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJyTMGQUagU
;)
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???
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???
Spoiler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster). ;D
Okay, I'll be serious now...
(http://bluwiki.com/images/4/4c/Lolcat.jpg)
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:-\
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Richard Dawkins just made an awesome speech after the taxpayers money in Great Britain have been spent on the pope's visit. The first thing the pope did was, of course, to blame atheists for nazism, which we've already dealt with in this topic and showed how blatant a lie it is.
This is truly awesome to see, even though I'll have to see it on YouTube rather than on real TV.
Link to the speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_0kFU7IfPM)
Johann Hari also made a very good speech:
Link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AASspr178Z)
And here are some few pages with useful evidence to show that nazi Germany was not only not atheistic, but in fact a very christian nation, and that those who claim hitler's evilness was inspired by evolution, that book was banned from the country. It's absolutely ridiculous arguments and it surprises me that the pope is making such an ignorant statement that any educated person in the world could destroy.
Pictures (http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm)
More pictures (http://www.nobeliefs.com/mementoes.htm)
P.Z. Meyer's blog post about banned books (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/09/who_was_on_the_nazis_naughty_l.php)
hitler's quotes about religion (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/09/list_of_hitler_quotes_in_honor.php)
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The first thing the pope did was, of course, to blame atheists for nazism,
Wtf No. I feel that it is a scam.
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Nazism isn't even a religion.
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The first thing the pope did was, of course, to blame atheists for nazism,
Wtf No. I feel that it is a scam.
What is a scam? Do you think it's a lie that he blamed atheists for nazism, or did the pope lie?
You'd better bet on the last one, here's a full text of his speech the first day he arrived in GB: :P
Link (http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/09/16/papal-visit-2010-popes-holyroodhouse-speech-full-text/)
Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society
Epic fail.
and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.
Epic irony. Guess who started this hate (small hint: "Christ-killers")?
It is indeed horrible what was done to the Jews. I wonder why he didn't mention any of the other groups who were denied their common humanity and sent to concentration camps under Hitler's religious extremist regime, like gays... But oh, wait, this fool still bigoted towards them.
Nazism isn't even a religion.
It's an ideology, yes. Though many religions do share similarities with ideologies. Not all ideologies are neccesarily evil; we probably all have one ideology we think is good, many in USA would probably see Liberalism/Capitalism as good ideologies.
But of course Nazism was an obviously evil ideology.
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This is absolutely insane. A documentary about the Westboro Baptist Church... They thank god for everything, even the holocaust, they have paintings in their rooms of natural disasters, they do nothing else than worshipping their imaginary dictator, spreading hate and disturbing people at funerals with their insanity. If anyone leaves, even their children, they just close off and try to show absolutely no feelings.
I did know about them and their opinions, but I hadn't imagined anyone could be so absolutely insane. It is incredible how big an influence indoctrination can have on people.
Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ticxD0GfewA)
Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byDXu3aMAc0)
Part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gXSlZ45GX4)
Part 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ua1Y7dLtIQ)
It is good that we have some super heroes (http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/07/22/super-heroes-vs-the-westboro-baptist-church/) to save the world from this evilness. :)
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Ha, watched that last night.
They say that if Christ were to return he would be glad for what they did and do. I, for one, think he would be disgusted. (Considering there is a deity, I'm agnostic.)
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Heh, pretty weird and lol'd at the protests (I'm seeing some Star Wars and Team Fortress). My cousins are Catholic, and probably my family too, although we mostly are Shaman.
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They get their kids into it? What the fuck is wrong with these people?
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They get their kids into it? What the fuck is wrong with these people?
This. There was a lad that had such a potty mouth when talking about homosexuality I never thought I would hear on a child of his age.
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Wow, though that doesnt surprise me. religion seems to attract all the idiots so that they drown out the sensible people. and there are sensible people who are heavily religious. many people just take the hate side and ignore the calls of acceptance and forgiveness.(like many stereotypical muslims) religion is one of the best and worst things to ever happen to humanity. (art/architecture,culture:idiots, KKK, and religious wars)
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I present to you: The Periodic Table of Atheists. ???
I knew Hk, H, Nt, Pz (writer of the great blog Pharyngula (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/)), Ep, Mh, D, Sa, Lk, Bg, S, Db, Sk, Ag (LOL), Tm, Dd, Cd, E, Hg, Kw, Pc, Ac, Jr, Be, Tf, Ar (writer of the great blog Atheist Revolution (http://www.atheistrev.com/)) and Ec.
27/118 = 22.88%.
And sort of Jn too, if that's the Beatle-guy. I guess it is.
How many of them did you know? ;D
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wtf
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Are you religious?
Do you believe in a god?
I'm an atheist. I don't believe in any god. ;D
Oh, and I doubt religious debates are allowed... So, unless Dan says we may, please don't come with evidence for/against anything.
Hope this was written neutral enough. I'm not good at writing neutral about religions. :P
I discuss religions nearly every day.
EDIT: Seems like Dan thinks it's ok that we discuss religion. :)
W00T
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I have described the poll options in the first post, because I'm not very happy with how some of the poll options are worded anymore (but changing them would be sort of unfair now, and I think it might also reset the poll).
Here in Denmark, I always hear from people that they don't believe Christianity to be true, but like Jesus' moral nonsense and plagiarism (and some even identify as Christians for this reason. I don't get why they don't identify as Buddhists, Ghandiists, Dawkinists, whateverists too, at the same time, when being that no longer means anything more than just agreeing with what the person/religion says).
The Old Testament is easy to refute as moral garbage and insanity, which I think most Christians can agree with (even though many people still think that the Ten Commandments were actually not only good, but also the most relevant ten, simple commandments which people could live by).
Anyway, this video points out some of the errors and other things in some of the things Jesus said:
http://www.atheistmedia.com/2011/07/was-jesus-worth-following.html (http://www.atheistmedia.com/2011/07/was-jesus-worth-following.html)
If you watch it on YouTube, you must be at least 18. I'm not sure why, but you have been warned.
It also critizises some of the things which could be very helpful in a holy book from that time, but which were lacking. I agree he or some of the other people in The Bible should had included some information about medicine, maybe something about not enslaving people, and a clear condemnation of what it said earlier in Leviticus about gays, plus a part saying they were equal, and something about women being equal would be useful as well, so we wouldn't have people being confused by the part telling them to shut up. And lots of other good information. Imagine the amount of suffering that could have saved us from, and how evil it would be of an omnipotent, omniscient thing not to care the slightest about it.
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so you are my sister. i gotcha now.
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I wish I had been viewing this forum when this thread started so all this crap would have not built up. The atheists have made a rather long run at it without any rebuttals. I'll see how much time I am willing to use up here.
I am waiting in excitement to see what this crap is.
Starting with the whole 6 days of creation versus billions of years:
Theists wanting to be informed can go to this website and read, since I don't have the time nor could I do a better job at explaining it. What you will learn on this website was BEFORE Darwin and was the common thought on the matter.
http://www.kjvbible.org/ (http://www.kjvbible.org/)
All the Christianphobic people, i.e. militant atheists should read it as well so that they would stop using arguments based on ignorance....but my experience shows it probably won't occur.
Can you show me one argument from ignorance made by a "militant atheist" in this thread?
I'm not Christianophobic. I know well that Christians are just as different from each other as any other group of people. But I do have some pretty big problems with Christianity. Critizising a religion is not the same as critizising the people.
If you find it offensive that I critizise The Bible, I can tell you that I think The Bible is very offensive as well.
Science remains at a loss to definitively explain the Ice Age and the anomaly of the mysterious mega fauna extinctions across the face of the Earth about 12,000 to 10,000 Radio Carbon years ago.
Where have I heard this before... It reminds me of the Faux News-Bill O'Reilly "Science can't explain it, therefore goddidit!" argument, which is ridiculous. That is really just the god of the gaps.
Geologic evidence from that period indicates extraordinary global massive volcanism, gigantic tidal waves, seismic activity on a vast scale, and extreme temperature swings on the Earth over a geologically brief period of time. It is no coincidence that the Bible at Genesis 1:2 describes the Earth as flooded, desolate, and in darkness in the timeframe closely corresponding to these catastrophic events in the Earth's natural history. Clearly, these two mysteries are linked.
Please show me what evidence there is, I don't see any reason to blindly trust this site, and I have other things to do than jumping around the internet to find evidence for claims I didn't make.
I'm just wondering why it doesn't link to any scientific sources at all... I clicked the Geology Resources link, but I don't know if it's a joke linking to the latest seismic data. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest. Is it just so that we can see how angry God is at all the innocent people living around the globe, maybe?
Another thing is that the site just uses adjectives to describe what happens. Notice that it doesn't actually make any solid claims about the period of time it describes, except from being different from the current Earth in some ways (volcanic activity and the other things it mentioned).
And it still denies all the evidence for the vast majority of the history of life, which is much more than a few thousand years. "What you will learn on this website was BEFORE Darwin and was the common thought on the matter." - Without knowing what reason to think this narrow interpretation of The Bible, among the vast ocean of different interpretations (which might show something about the vagueness of the book?) was what MOST people thought before Darwin, I'll just say that it is the equivilant to what was thought BEFORE we learned that The Earth was a sphere, and not flat, or BEFORE we learned that diseases are caused by mikroorganisms and parasites, and not demons.
"Young life creationism" is almost as absurd as young Earth creationism. Accepting the evidence for Earth's 4.5 billion years old history doesn't make it the slightest less absurd to reject the evidence for the vast majority of the history of life.
And it raises another question: Why would a god make a universe run for 13.7 billion years before creating life in it?
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I'm an atheist, and I probably will be as long as I live. I don't see any evidence for why I should believe in a God. I am open to suggestion though.
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Creationists are idiots.
I believe though that some more or less some omnipotent being set the universe into motion (and maybe more), and more or less like a simulation, let it go without modifying it.
I fail. :P But that's what makes sense to me. I don't really think he/she/it meddles with anything... I don't really know at all. This argument is very fail-structured.
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Creationists are idiots.
Agreed.
I believe though that some more or less some omnipotent being set the universe into motion (and maybe more), and more or less like a simulation, let it go without modifying it.
I fail. :P But that's what makes sense to me. I don't really think he/she/it meddles with anything... I don't really know at all. This argument is very fail-structured.
That's deism.
The biggest problem I see with that is just that it simply moves the question "where did the universe come from?" to "where did the being come from?"
I think any being capable of making a universe would be more complicated than, and thus harder to justify the existence of, than the universe.
This is why I like the multiverse idea, because it makes the "fine tuning argument" redundant.
Not that I think the fine tuning argument seems very convincing when life is in focus. The fact that any good god used physical laws like these instead of magic capable of giving us perfectly good and happy lives seems like a self-contradiction.
I think this video points it out well:
Is the Universe Fine Tuned for Life? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCKqj-2JXZg#)
The vast majority of the volume of the universe is not good for life at all.
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I believe though that some more or less some omnipotent being set the universe into motion (and maybe more), and more or less like a simulation, let it go without modifying it.
*places 10^52 kg dot* *presses play* *watches forever*
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See, Darv gets it!
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That's just a sample and I don't have time to pick out all the statements made that are ignorant.
An argument from ignorance is not the same as an ignorant statement. An ignorant statement is a statement which is unaware of what we know, an argument from ignorance is the logical fallacy that says because something has not been proven false, it's true.
Don't try to run from your statement.
With that said, many of those statements aren't ignorant at all. Some of them I don't know the source behind, so I can't comment on all of them:
1. "and they are very near to understand how our universe is here."
Why is that ignorant? We have learned so much from science during the last few centuries, last century we found out about the Big Bang, and now scientists have begun making hypothesies about what caused the Big Bang, from a multiverse or even from nothing. It's true we can't be sure about what we will know in the future, but we're absolutely getting closer and closer all the time.
2. "Probably in 50 years (before my death... I hope...) we will create the first A.I. with the intelligence of a human brain."
That's not ignorant at all. Why shouldn't that be possible? Our computer power is increasing exponentially and in a few years, it is on the same level as the brain power of humans. All we have to do then is to make software capable of simulating the equivilant to human thoughts.
We already have AI in robots, in games, even though they're very different from the human mind. But why shouldn't it be possible to simulate the human mind, when we continue to learn more about it all the time?
3."Actually we are near to create life itself."
We have already created a virus, but not everyone define viruses as life. We know a lot about how cells work, so if we could assemble the molecules properly, why shouldn't that be possible? Here is an interesting video about how the first simple life could have arisen all the way until evolution takes over (just start at 2:47, where the important stuff starts if you're interested):
The Origin of Life - Abiogenesis - Dr. Jack Szostak (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg#)
4."If a God(s) exists it couldn't be like the Christian one described in the Holy Bible " + 16
No it couldn't. Do you want to discuss the problem of evil? :) In that case, are you going to claim that it destroys free will?
5 + 13 + 14
How are they ignorant?
6."If I read a holy book, all I see is people getting killed because they carry sticks on sundays or people who get killed because they don't worship a god."
All is obviously an exaggeration, but The Bible does contain some very insane things in especially Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
7."And statistics show that there are more religious people who commit crime in percent than atheists.
There you go:
http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm (http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm)
And atheists don't divorce as often as religious people..."
There you go:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm (http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm)
8."About evolution: there are proofs that confirm it! An example? Dogs. Many races was created by crossing other dog races."
Proofs is not the right word to use here, evidence is, and I don't think crossing dog races is good evidence for evolution. Dogs are good evidence for the process of evolution by artificial selection (just like wheat, bananas and many other agricultural products), because it shows how powerful the selective force can be over just a few centuries or millennia. It should open people's eyes to what can happen in a few million years or billions of years, despite the fact that natural selection isn't as strong.
If you deny evolution, are you the kind of person who says "I believe in micro-evolution, but not macro-evolution"?
9."Some centuries ago (not millions of years) they weren't on this planet."
I don't know exactly what FGFG is referring to here. But obviously dogs have become very diverse since they were domesticated, which is visible on the shape of their cranium, as one example:
(http://i55.tinypic.com/2jxhxh.gif)
Figure 3: Principal component (PC) analysis for skull shape in the complete data set. A-C, Plots of the PC scores. D, Shape changes associated with the PC axes. For each PC, the shapes corresponding to the observed extremes in the positive and negative directions are shown as a warped surface of a wolf skull (Wiley et al. 2005).
It is from this text, which says some more on the subject:
http://www.flywings.org.uk/PDF%20files/AmNat2010.pdf (http://www.flywings.org.uk/PDF%20files/AmNat2010.pdf)
10."Abiogenesis"
Is it a joke? You just take one word, expect me to find the context and call it an argument from ignorance (or now it seems like you changed your mind to call it just an ignorant statement). Please explain.
11."the oceans contained a lot of molecules, very complex molecules."
It had been nice if you included some more, so that I could see it was the oceans 4.4 billion years ago. Anyway, I don't know what this is based on, as I didn't make the statement.
12."After a while some molecules entered the bubble and combined forming the first very simple organs."
Obviously he meant organells instead of organs. But again, I didn't make this statement, so I don't know what it's based on.
Please apply that same thinking to people in relation to your homophobic label.
The difference is first of all that you cannot just change/choose your sexuality. If you hear better arguments against some aspect of your religion, you will change opinion if you're open minded, that's the whole point of discussing it! But by critizising homosexuality, you effectively critizise everyone who is that, because all homosexuals have that thing in common. Not all people who are Christians have the aspect of Christianity I critizise in common, for example if I critizise the idea of a hell, many Christians might tell me they don't believe in that.
Don't confuse a declarative statement with evidence. It's perfectly legitimate to point out that Science doesn't know something.
I'm just wondering why it stated it...
Then don't read it. It's not like the material given is thousands of pages.
There are souce citations throughout each section, you must have missed them in all your non-reading.
Did you mean all the subpages at the bottom too, or just the main page you linked to?
I don't think the length has anything to do with the quality, though. So far I rate the quality terrible, because it's completely unsourced. It's the quality I reject.
About the "sources": I only see references to Bible verses, which are not scientific sources. You cannot prove The Bible using The Bible. If the idea on the site is based solely on The Bible and no evidence, it's simply useless, when there's no evidence that The Bible is actually true.
That's just silly. You would know that if you read some. Mr. Johnson has an interest in geology.
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/author.asp?authorid=138170 (http://www.authorsden.com/visit/author.asp?authorid=138170)
I was just introducing the problem of evil.
I'd wish he had had the same interest in biology.
So.
???
Where do you get that idea from?
I assumed that you accepted the Big Bang theory, since you accepted the evidence for Earth's geologic history. But you rejected the history of life and think life was created a few thousand years ago (at least, that's the message I got from the site you linked to, that the mass extinctions it mentioned 10,000 to 12,000 years ago were not mass extinctions, but that life was created after that, and that Earth was simply completely ruined all the time before that. Which, when I think about it, actually goes against geologic evidence.).
Secondly, I thought you believed in natural solutions?
I absolutely do, I'm just questioning the site (which I assume you agree with, since you said "nor could I do a better job at explaining it.").
Third, What is time from the perspective of a god?
That depends completely on what attributes you gave the god when it was made. It could be pretty much anything you want it to.
Lastly, I gave one source that gives a clear argument that the Bible itself doesn't declare a 6,000 + year old earth and universe but rather a universe and earth that is very old.
If it still conflicts with evolution, it's still unscientific nonsense.
My point being that ignorance is used by atheists to argue against ignorance believed by some theists.
So, if we argue against some ignorant people, we're ignorant because we don't argue against those who aren't ignorant? Why should we ignore the ignorant people and only argue against those who are (according to you) not ignorant?
If you deny evolution, I think you're ignorant. Maybe some other Christian who accepts evolution, doesn't even beliefe in a god, will think you're ignorant too, and tell me that I'm ignorant because I argue with ignorant people like you. Don't you see how nonsensical that is? I think it's good to argue against ignorance, so it is exposed and people can avoid it. Arguing against it must be more like the opposite.
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I believe in Many, Many Gods -
All the God which have EVER been believed in, by any Person, Creature, thinking Species
Everywhere - in this and ever other Universe.
Belief has PSI implications - SOMETHING comes into exitence in the other Realm, the one which is not physical - it grows, gains power, exists.
It can almost never be destroyed - becuase you can never UNBELIEVE in a God.
However - over and above all that, there are the true Creaters - the Forces which shaped the infinite Multiverse.
The ones who can NEVER directly intervene - expect in the absolutely broadest senses.
In the words of Michael Moorcock - the Forces of Chaos, the Forces of Order.
Or in other terms, Energy and Change, Mass and Inertia.
Somewhere in the middle lies that which is neither - once again in the words of Michael Moorcock -
The Cosmic Balance.
But also - Chance, the Fates, Providence - whatever.
I am a True Believer - and by inclination I would veer towards being a servant of Chaos.
However - I serve The Cosmic Balance - or I did.
A dispossed "Possessor".
A discarded Tool of Fate.
An Exile - Lost without Hope or Home.
And I DO believe in an Afterlife.
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Can you show me one argument from ignorance made by a "militant atheist" in this thread?
About evolution: there are proofs that confirm it! An example? Dogs. Many races was created by crossing other dog races."
9."Some centuries ago (not millions of years) they weren't on this planet."
10."Abiogenesis"
11."the oceans contained a lot of molecules, very complex molecules."
12."After a while some molecules entered the bubble and combined forming the first very simple organs."
Ahhh... Evolution. Another controversial topic that involves Science vs Religion. I believe, although virtually impossible, never get Science mixed with Religion... One time we were studying evolution and one of my friends came over and told me something like... "This is really stupid. Why do we have to study this?" And he said a few religion-related words... I think faith was one of them. And I said something like "Really? This has nothing to do with religion. It's solid science." and then he realized that made sense. lol
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snip
I can barely read your posts.
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I can barely read your posts.
Lol'd.
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My actual choice wasn't on the list so I picked "I'm not sure".
In actuality, I do have a firm set of beliefs: I'm an animist but I'm not at all religious aobut it. I have no rituals, no prayers, nor even faith. I just perceive spirits in everything (animal, mineral, and vegitable) plus free-roaming ones. It's not a matter of belief any more than I have to believe my keyboard here exists. I see it and feel it beneath my fingers, so it's there. Same with the spirits. 2nd sight runs in my family.
I don't hold these spirits in any degree of reverence. They're just my fellow beings, the same as non-crazy people view each other. Some spirits are friends, some are foes, some are casual acquaintances, most are neutral. We move around each other just like pedestrians on a busy sidewalk. Most are no smarter than the bodies or objects they inhabit, so I don't think I can converse with animals or mailboxes or anything. I'm not THAT crazy ;D
Beyond the constant crowd of spirits around me, I neither know nor care. I've never seen the creation of the universe as a religious question. Maybe some Great Architect lit the fuze of the Big Bang, maybe not, and if there was a Great Architect, there's no requirement He/she/it has to be a god. After all, according to some physicists, I can create a universe myself just by flipping a coin. Maybe I myself created this one. Either way, it's interesting to learn more about the process. My own great hope is that eventually we'll find out our universe was mass-produced by a machine and is being used as a centerpiece on some alien's coffe table. The alien is only interested in what it looks like on the outiside and neither knows nor cares what happens inside ;D.
Between cosmology and the crowd of spirits always around me, I admit the possibility that members of some advanced civilization periodically get their jollies by playing god to us pathetic humans. Or maybe all our prophets were just crazier than I am. ::)
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In actuality, I do have a firm set of beliefs: I just perceive spirits in everything (animal, mineral, and vegitable) plus free-roaming ones. It's not a matter of belief any more than I have to believe my keyboard here exists. I see it and feel it beneath my fingers, so it's there. Same with the spirits. 2nd sight runs in my family.
I don't hold these spirits in any degree of reverence. They're just my fellow beings, the same as non-crazy people view each other. Some spirits are friends, some are foes, some are casual acquaintances, most are neutral. We move around each other just like pedestrians on a busy sidewalk. Most are no smarter than the bodies or objects they inhabit, so I don't think I can converse with animals or mailboxes or anything.
Hmmm - I agree with what I have quoted - although I actually take it further.
Every Atom has a Spirit - the combinations of Atoms have a collective Spirit - but taking it further than you - There are Spirits of groups of creatures, Families, Packs, Species - groups of people - Families, Tribes, Cultures, Nations, Humanity.
The Earth has a Spirit - Gaia or Mother Nature. The Sun and the Solar System have Spirits - the Galaxy has a Spirit, all Galaxies do - there must be a Spirit of The Universe.
I do NOT worship any of these Spirits - but I acknowledge that they exist, and Respect their existence.
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Hmmm - I agree with what I have quoted - although I actually take it further.
Every Atom has a Spirit - the combinations of Atoms have a collective Spirit - but taking it further than you - There are Spirits of groups of creatures, Families, Packs, Species - groups of people - Families, Tribes, Cultures, Nations, Humanity.
The Earth has a Spirit - Gaia or Mother Nature. The Sun and the Solar System have Spirits - the Galaxy has a Spirit, all Galaxies do - there must be a Spirit of The Universe.
I do NOT worship any of these Spirits - but I acknowledge that they exist, and Respect their existence.
That doesn't actually make much sense to me. In my opinion that's basically respecting the atoms and their existence, along with the systems in which they are embedded (Earth, galaxies, families, solar system). You're basically equating every definable object to being a spirit, so basically just "respect and acknowledge" that each of these things exist anyway. I do not mean to be offensive to anyone at all by saying this.
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Hmmm - I agree with what I have quoted - although I actually take it further.
Every Atom has a Spirit - the combinations of Atoms have a collective Spirit - but taking it further than you - There are Spirits of groups of creatures, Families, Packs, Species - groups of people - Families, Tribes, Cultures, Nations, Humanity.
The Earth has a Spirit - Gaia or Mother Nature. The Sun and the Solar System have Spirits - the Galaxy has a Spirit, all Galaxies do - there must be a Spirit of The Universe.
I do NOT worship any of these Spirits - but I acknowledge that they exist, and Respect their existence.
That doesn't actually make much sense to me. In my opinion that's basically respecting the atoms and their existence, along with the systems in which they are embedded (Earth, galaxies, families, solar system). You're basically equating every definable object to being a spirit, so basically just "respect and acknowledge" that each of these things exist anyway. I do not mean to be offensive to anyone at all by saying this.
Aye - No Problem
Just that I respect and acknowledge that they all have SPIRITS as well as a physical existence.
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How am I doing that when I stated, "so that they would stop using arguments based on ignorance"?
Fair enough, it's not the same thing.
However, I still never asked for a collection of "ignorant statements". I think everyone make ignorant statements sometimes, and it's impossible not to be ignorant of some things - that would require knowing everything.
The problem arises when people make claims which contradict the knowledge we have already obtained. Then it is ignorance worth critizising.
Critizising something like "if an intelligence is needed to create the universe, a higher intelligence would ne needed to create the intelligence" for being ignorant seems a bit irrelevant, when nobody knows and the statement is based on some logic/reasoning and not knowledge (or lack of it).
We are not very near to understanding how the universe is here,
I gave an example of the advances we've made and keep making. Near is pretty much completely subjective when there's nothing to compare it to, so I don't think we can possibly agree on that.
we are not probably 50 years out from A.I. equivalent to a human being
I think we are, for the reasons I've stated.
One interesting example is the Blue Brain Project.
http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/ (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/)
From the website (In Brief page):
"The computing power needed is considerable. Each simulated neuron requires the equivalent of a laptop computer. A model of the whole brain would have billions. Supercomputing technology is rapidly approaching a level where simulating the whole brain becomes a concrete possibility."
We've know that our computation power has doubled approximately every two years for more than half a century now. A simulated neuron requiring the power of a laptop now in 2011... That's more than a billion neurons on a laptop in 2050.
The number of neurons in the human brain is estimated to be 78 to 94.2 billion, according to this article (which requires login to access the full one, however):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.21974/abstract (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.21974/abstract)
If those numbers are correct, we could easily simulate all the neurons within the human brain by 2050 on a super-computer, maybe even high-end desktop computers. Even if those numbers are off by 10 or 100 times, and even if we don't assume software improvements reducing the power needed to simulate each neuron, it would still be possible on super-computers.
and we are not near to creating life itself.
If creating a virus, which is on the edge of the definition of life, is not near to creating life itself, then what is?
4+16. Every atheist I have debated in relation to the Christian religion has been ignorant of the subject and the statements written here are no different. Atheists, like a lot of people, tend to define good and evil, along with other abstracts, from a flawed human perspective, a perspective that is extremely limited in relation to the perspective of a God. To say that human beings have a myopic perspective, would be a huge understatement. So, when atheists give arguments that there can not be a god like so because xyz wouldn't occur in the world...it's based on ignorance. Human perspective is from a very limited past, one that isn't even accurate and is mainly based on the present experience of individuals.
From my "flawed human perspective" it is certainly evil to create a world with suffering when you are able to create one without suffering, and it is beyond me how you could think any "bigger perspective" could think otherwise if it is not evil itself. Evilness is exactly causing suffering, so a god capable of not doing that, but insisting on doing it, is evil. If you insist on using another definition of evilness, you must at least agree that a god capable of not causing harm, but choosing to, is still causing unneeded suffering. That is incompatible with being all-loving. Wrapping it up "god works in mysterious ways which we can't understand" doesn't change that fact.
If you can come with valid reasoning for why a god should choose suffering while capable of not choosing it, you're welcome. Until then, it simply seems like the "God works in myserious ways we can't understand"-argument. It's true that it would know much more than us (being omniscient), but that doesn't make all of our existing reasoning invalid or irrelevant.
5+13+14...Are you saying that you personally know?
No, I'm attempting to find out using logic.
7. False, all anyone has to do is look at how many felons in prison "find" Jesus, Allah, etc.
Can you clarify "find"?
The amount of religious organizations that have prison outreach programs...how many atheist groups find the need to reach out to felons?
Why is it relevant? Do you think the prisoners are a bunch of atheists walking around doing crime, and then as they are locked up and religious organizations reach out to them, virtually all of them suddenly become convinced and religious so that they magically disappear on the statistics when asked?
9. He said dogs were not present on the planet centuries ago...which is why I said it was ignorant.
"Many races was created by crossing other dog races. Some centuries ago (not millions of years) they weren't on this planet."
He said dog races.
Let us examine three recent statements by you:
All the Christianphobic people, i.e. militant atheists should read it as well so that they would stop using arguments based on ignorance....but my experience shows it probably won't occur.
So what? Just because somebody criticizes something doesn't equate into having a phobia about it.
Don't you agree that it is homophobic to implement death penalty for gays?
I don't know their specific reasons but unless it's based on an irrational fear, the word is incorrect.
So, despite the irony in calling atheists merely critizising a religion "militant", when the word is normally used pretty differently about "militant Islamists", which actually are militant and not merely critizising, let's see how consistent your own "phobia" is.
Even if "militant atheists" were as militant as Stalin, would that automatically make them Christianophobic? I think your own quote just answered that.
Despite this, I can agree that homophobia is not very accurate. "Heterosexism" might be better, since it's as broad as racism and sexism in that it simply priviliges heterosexuality over anything else. It still lacks covering priviliging other sexualities, since sexism is already reserved for priviliging genders.
Considering an irrational fear of Christianity, and not the people, I think there's nothing irrational in fearing a religion which countless people have been killed in the name of and for many different reasons within the religion.
Fear of a group of people is irrational in cases like religion because not everyone in the group have a lot in common. If a religion was formed around Leviticus 20:13 only, it'd be very rational to fear them, but not when they're united by so many different things they can basically pick and choose from as they want. Then it would always turns into irrational generalizations.
Critizising homosexuality is as nonsensical as critizising being black. Some people like to claim it's a "lifestyle choise they disagree with". I'm wondering why anyone would choose that if it were a choise, considering the amount of bigotry they risk facing in some of the world, or even worse in societies where it's outlawed, in some countries even by death. And evidence supports that it's not a choise at all. Not only is it not a "developmental disorder", as many health organizations liked to claim before the 1970's and 80's, but evidence shows that genes play at least a very large role in it.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2881563 (http://www.jstor.org/pss/2881563)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9549243 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9549243)
As opposed to that, our ideas can only be improved if they are examined rationally, which includes critizising them.
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Not true.
Here are some of the sources given starting from the beginning of the site's articles:
http://www.livescience.com/8550-star-super-hot-water-vapor-surprises-scientists.html (http://www.livescience.com/8550-star-super-hot-water-vapor-surprises-scientists.html)
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/fossils/rocks-layers.html (http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/fossils/rocks-layers.html)
http://www.kjvbible.org/greenland_ice_sheet.html (http://www.kjvbible.org/greenland_ice_sheet.html) * multiple souces given
http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/deepsea/level-2/geology/vents.html (http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/deepsea/level-2/geology/vents.html)
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/quaternary/labrea.html (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/quaternary/labrea.html)
[1] Source: Discover Magazine April 2004, page 11, "What's in a Gallon of Gas?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_atmosphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_atmosphere)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090529-sun-stealing-atmosphere.html (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090529-sun-stealing-atmosphere.html)
http://www.hbot4u.com/hom.html (http://www.hbot4u.com/hom.html)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-09/esa-rfw090210.php (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-09/esa-rfw090210.php)
There are other sources quoted with no website links and some sources given require a subscription to read the entier article, etc. Point being, you are making a false statement...whether you are stating that out of ignorance of not reading or lying, is up to you to explain.
I read the main page you sent me, I have not read all the sub-pages, which I understood from what you wrote were not relevant. That's why I didn't find any sources.
I'm not yet sure if I'm goign to read them, simply because I'm not sure if I'm willing to spend that much time on it.
I stand by my statement that the main page/first page is poorly sourced, when it makes scientific claims but does not contain one single resource to any scientific work supporting the claims.
You see references to Bible sources because he is trying to give evidence of what is written in the Bible. That should be a simple concept to understand and accept.
It is, it was more of a problem if there were only Bible references (as on the main page).
To these two statements:
His subject is about geology and the age of the earth in relation to what is written in the Bible. His field of study is not biology but I don't see where it would be needed for what he was writing about.
That's not what I think or what the website asserts. http://www.kjvbible.org/death_of_the_ancient_world.html (http://www.kjvbible.org/death_of_the_ancient_world.html)
Because he touches biology many times. Here's one example from the very start of a page you linked to (http://www.kjvbible.org/death_of_the_ancient_world.html):
"The geologic and fossil records are the surviving evidence, written in stone, that testify to the truth that the Earth is very old and was populated long before the seven days of Genesis chapter one. But does that record provide evidence of the sudden end of the old world by a universal destructive event before the seven days and before Noah's flood?
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
(Genesis 1:2 KJV)
This certainly would appear to be the case."
It goes on to say:
"This little-known evidence ["animal-cemeteries" all over the planet indicating a global mass extinction a few thousand years ago] was documented by many back in the 19th century, but this evidence was mostly ignored by the leading scientists of the day because it did not fit into the prevailing scientific paradigm. This evidence is still mostly ignored today, although the Young Earth Creationists have seized upon it as proof of Noah's flood. It is actually proof of the flood which happened just before the time of Genesis 1:2, the time when all life on the surface of the Earth had been wiped out."
So life became completely extinct between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, and then God created all of it again?
Then I don't really see the great thing about the creation event, if everything existed already for billions of years and God just exterminated it, just to create it all again shortly after.
I also notice how the length of the time gap has no basis in what The Bible itself says at all. This interpretation is really just one big ad hoc to "evidence" I have yet to read, but which I highly doubt at this point. In any case, even if the "evidence" said there was such an event, The Bible is still so vague that you could never conclude that from The Bible itself.
Sounds like dogma to me versus science.
Exactly... Denying molecular evidence - DNA data stored on computers, which forms nested hieracies exactly as we would suspect when life evolved from common ancestors, even despite the fact that the vast majority of the human genetic code is not used for making any proteins at all, and about 20% is never even transcribed into RNA. Any denial of this can hardly be based on anything else than dogma, just like the denial of vestigal organs - really, just what was God doing there?
http://oolon.awardspace.com/SMOGGM.htm (http://oolon.awardspace.com/SMOGGM.htm)
Or take a look at ring species (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species), or the extensive fossil record which the site apparently doesn't deny. I have yet to read all of it to see how it makes sense out of accepting the fossil record but denying evolution, but maybe it'll be some good entertainment one day, even despite the fact that the fossil record is absolutely not the strongest evidence for evolution, which many young Earth creationists like to take on when pointing out all the "gaps", which they haven't realized the number of increases the more fossils we find.
I obviously didn't make myself clear. Let me try again. Ignorance of the Bible is the cause of some theist's assertion that the universe is 6,000+ years old to argue for...Ignorance of the Bible is the cause of why some atheists make the same assertion from which to argue against. IOW, both groups are ignorant of what the Bible states is the age of the universe.
So what does The Bible say about the age of the universe? Does any verse say 13.7 billion years?
All those ad hoc "reasonings" trying to interpret vague Bible verses to make them sound like they support current science are pathetic. You can look up Genesis 1:2 and seeing that Earth "was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." You can then say that it clearly refers to x or y or z disaster in the past, but it is so vague that you can make it refer to pretty much anything you want.
It's not ignorance of The Bible, but ignorance of evidence which makes them believe that the universe is 6000 years old, deny evolution, geology, astronomy, etc.
And sorry about missing some of your posts.
Nothing new under the sun.
"Creationism is the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being."
I said in most cases. If someone claims humanity and Earth were created by a god within the last 10000 years, I don't feel sorry for calling them stupid. Creationism in the broadest sense, as I see it, claims
a) the universe was created by a supernatural being 13.7 billion years ago in The Big Bang, which I have yet to see evidence for was caused by a god, but which I think people can believe without being stupid.
b) life was created by a supernatural being in its most simple form about 3.7 billion years ago. Considering we have a good understanding of how cells work and good explanations for how it could arise naturally (abiogenesis, chemistry is apparently "magic" compared to someone creating all the animals, and a woman from a rib), it seems completely redundant to include a god into this, but I still wouldn't go as far as to call people who think that stupid.
c) Earth was created by a supernatural being 4.5 billion years ago. Again, I think it formed naturally from a protoplanetary disc, but if people really insist on invoking magic here, I wouldn't go as far as to call all of them stupid.
d) humanity was created by a supernatural being. This is a denial of the history of life, and it is just plain stupid in my opinion. I don't feel the slightest sorry to say that.
So you think it's easier to justify the existence of a car versus the much more complicated Engineer?
No, because engineers are a product of evolution, which allows a slow, gradual accumulation of complexity over many generations. One thing I think is interesting about the idea of a multiverse is that the universes could undergo a similar process, like if they give birth to new universes (maybe by being cyclic for example). All of the universes could also be completely random, and we'd still end up with an infinite amount of habitable universes.
It's not impossible a god could be the product of a process equivilant to evolution, but until someone can come up with such a process which would make any sense, I think I'll stick to the multiverse idea and stand by my statement that it is harder to justify the existence of.
...still...simply moves the question "where did the multiverses come from?"
True. I think a likely explanation is quantum fluctuations, which is possible if the total energy is zero (as us the case in our universe, which is flat, according to WMAP with an error margin of 0,5%: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html (http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html)).
The fact that any good god used physical laws like these instead of magic capable of giving us perfectly good and happy lives seems like a self-contradiction.
If abiogenesis isn't a bonafide example of magic, then nothing is.
http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/tis2/index.php/component/content/article/51.html (http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/tis2/index.php/component/content/article/51.html)
That article fails in its very first line:
"Charles Darwin recognised that a basic problem of his theory of evolution was to produce life itself."
No, his theory was a theory about how life evolves once it exists, not how it came into existence. The origin of life is irrelevant to evolution - whether the first cell was planted by a god or came about naturally, it could still evolve. It's like saying an umbrella doesn't work because it doesn't predict hurricanes, to quote cdk007 (whose video on abiogenesis I've linked to here several times).
Thus, it is complete nonsense to say "1953 was a landmark year for scientists researching an evolutionary explanation for the appearance of life.". Those who wrote that simply fail to understand what evolution is.
"But, we can ask whether the atmosphere proposed by Miller was likely to be stable."
...We could also ask if any source could produce significant amounts of such gases on the early, geologically very active Earth. Maybe they have heard of volcanos, which produce massive amounts of both ammonia, water vapor and methane.
And about the hydrogen, the decay rate might be overestimated...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050425165353.htm (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050425165353.htm)
So the atmosphere wasn't irrelevant.
"Where would the cooling systems have been that are needed to isolate the products and protect them from further reaction? What was the source of energy?"
I'm wondering if you even watched the video I liked to. It explains well how the most primitive cells could have used hydrothermal vents.
"Miller used electrical discharges and compared them to lightning. But the intensities required would be far greater than those experienced today."
Even if hydrothermal vents were not the source of energy, but lightning, this wrongly assumes that the intensity of lightning was the same on the young Earth as it is today.
"In any process that leads to complexity there must be an information source."
Just like in snowflakes.
"The problem is that enzymes are proteins themselves, and they need enzymes to form themselves!"
I don't think early life started out with proteins either at all... Ribozymes are RNA, which can both store information and act as enzymes. A primitive version of them consisting of a few nucleotides could work well as a replacement for the earliest proteins. Anything acting as an enzyme which could increase the rate of any beneficial reaction would be selected for, whether it makes the reaction occur ten times faster or a billion times.
"Consider a cell containing just 124 proteins. Professor Morowitz has calculated that the chance of all these forming without information input is 1 in 10100,000,000. One of the smallest known genomes is that of Mycoplasma genitalium which manufactures about 600 proteins, so what are the chances of that happening without intelligent input? Humans have about 100,000 proteins."
So what?
It mentions several calculations, one of them is about the formation of RNA. I did not find any source to those calculations else than names, but I'd like to know the details on those calculations.
"The first “ribo-organism” would need all the cell’s metabolic functions in order to survive and the is not evidence that such a range of functions is possible for RNA."
But if it is based on this ignorant assumption, never mind...
"The conclusion from these arguments presents the most serious obstacle, if indeed it is not fatal, to the theory of spontaneous generation."
Again a major flaw in this page... Confusing spontaneous generation with the modern hypothesis of abiogenesis. Spontaneous generation has been dead in the scientific community for centuries.
"Prof Francis Crick, who was a great believer in the accidental origin of life on Earth, said, “The origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions that had to be satisfied to get it going.”
And the useage of "accidental", which is a negative word, just points out how biased this "intelligent design" page is some more... I feel sorry for them if they don't consider the emergence of life a good thing, or at least just neutral.
Condemning abiogenesis as magic based on that site is also ignorant of all science after that experiment. Plenty of research has been done since, for example at the Szostak Laboratory:
http://genetics.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/index.html (http://genetics.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/index.html)
I think denying abiogenesis on this attempt to refute this experiment is as stupid as denying that we could ever fly to the Moon based on the fact that the first aircraft couldn't do it.
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Your point about the virus. Did we create a virus out of nothing, from existing chemicals or did we just alter an existing virus? The scale of life creation going from actual, close to didn't occur.
The first virus made from scratch (de novo) was made in 2002, from existing chemicals, of course.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/297/5583/1016 (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/297/5583/1016)
You answer it yourself when you say, "unneeded" suffering. What is your criteria for needed and unneeded suffering? Do you think perhaps that you would be at quite a disadvantage in comparison to an intelligence that is not limited by time and clarity? You do realize that if our existience had a purpose then it would be within a framework. Look at your own life. Would it make any logical sense for your parents to prevent you from experiencing anything negative? No consequences? Perhaps they never harmed you via discipline?
Perhaps you should rent, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.....and listen to some of the dialogue, especially from Kirk. If atheists on the fictional Enterprise can figure it out, you should be able to.
All suffering is unneeded, since it can be avoided, if an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent god exists. It has pr. definition both the ability to prevent it and the knowledge to make the system it wants to without suffering. And since it's benevolent, it would want to minimize suffering.
You say I'm at a disadventage, but how can you then yourself state that "if our existence had a purpose, it would be given within a framework"? And how can you compare it to our parents - they aren't omnipotent/-scient/benevolent at all?
No, my parents never harmed me via discipline, as far as I can remember. Absolutely not if you mean corporal punishment. They may have harmed me by accident if they had to prevent me from doing something.
But if they were omnipotent, they could simply change my mind so that I wouldn't do what I shouldn't do. They could change my mind so I had no desire to do it at all, eliminating the need for consequences.
As for purpose, I don't think that has to be given already, as if we're test subjects having to go through life as True Christians to get to heaven and otherwise end up in hell (which certainly conflicts with benevolent, if you belive in that). I think people can find their own meaning in life, as in what they want to do with it.
Uh, no, that's not why I call some militant. Criticising is one thing, but when you become an activist, are aggressive and treat a cause in a manner similar to warfare between opposing sides...it's militant. You can't look across the aisle at theists and use terminology to describe their advocacy and ignore your own.
Militant islamists threaten opposing views by suicide bombings, militant Christians threaten opposing views by shooting people at abortion clinics... Yes, some atheists have an aim for a world without religion, but it doesn't mean they will do violence to obtain it - so they are not militant, not in any way in the sense of how the word was used about islamists etc.
I don't see how being verbally aggressive and threatening a cause by using words can be compared to using violence in any way.
Luke 19:27: But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me. - Jesus
Also, I think that the only rational response to that from atheists or any non-Christian would be to oppose such a cause.
From a naturalistic perspective can you even rationalize why homosexuality should be on an equal basis with heterosexuality? I can see why homosexuals would have a problem with religion because from a moral aspect, their behaviour is not condoned...I find it bizzare that they would move so far in the other direction, to embrace materialism where nature itself declares the behaviour as being aberrant. Did nature choose homosexuality as the way to continue the species? Is not anatomy evidence enough? Where is the vaulted atheist reasoning skills when it comes to this duplicity? Do the blind and deaf go through life thinking that nature created their condition and therefore it's good...it's normal..it's something to embrace and celebrate? Should the world accept the condition of blindness as being equal to seeing just because it occurs? If you were intellectually honest, you would take pause and think about this dilema. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you have thought about it a lot. How do you reconcile?
Evolution might well have selected for it... It could easily be of benefit to a population to have a percentage of it which doesn't have children, but can spend their resources on helping the rest of their community. It could also be a secondary trait to some other evolutionary advantage for the species, evolution and genes aren't all-powerful and many of them often influence multiple things.
Here's an interesting (imo) blog post about it:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-intelligent-homosexuals-guide-t-2011-06-21 (http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-intelligent-homosexuals-guide-t-2011-06-21)
With that said, I don't think it matters in our society at all what the natural cause is. There's no reason to take the discrimination from nature into our societies, it's just an appeal to nature, which is obviously a fallacy.
Another thing is that nature doesn't declare it to be "abbarant". Humans aren't any special exception, homosexuality exists naturally in many other species:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals)
Also, you say it's something we "embrace and celebrate". Some do, but you're really making a generalization here.
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A debate sub-forum?
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The "Everything Else" forum is for anything. We talk about other games, and randomly spam. Few users venture there. We've been stuck with about the same amount of people since it's creation :P
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I kol'd. :P Especially because I've tried almost exactly what happened during a debate with a theist about a year ago (excluding the ending). :P
Can't Have It Both Ways (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44ilZq3R900#ws)
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"When researchers created a synthetic genome (genetic map) of the virus and implanted it into a cell, the virus became "biologically active," meaning it went to work reproducing itself."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-11-13-new-life-usat_x.htm (http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-11-13-new-life-usat_x.htm)
I think it's misleading to state that they "created life" considering the above in bold. So at this point I would still maintain my opinion that we are not near to creating life itself as was declared.
I never linked to that project about the bacteriophage either. The project I linked to made a poliovirus.
With that logic, all pleasure is unneeded since it too can be avoided.
Do you like suffering, and hate pleasure?
Let's get this out of the way, I don't accept the premise you have given in the first place. YOU create false dilemmas by declaring what an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent entity should and should not do.
Your god has three attributes - omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence, so I'm not the one introducing black and white thinking here. You can always redefine what good is as whatever your god wants or simply ignore even thinking about what such an attribute would constitute. If we can't say anything about what omnibenevolence constitutes, it also seems pretty pointless to attribute it to a god.
Again, what is sufficient suffering? What is too much?
Sufficient suffering would be none, because making people suffer while capable of avoiding it is inconsistent with being good.
You don't even think there is a purpose of suffering, pain, anything that would bring the slightest discomfort physically or mentally.
There is an evolutionary reason. Evolution is not omnipotent, it doesn't create the framework in which we need suffering. We need pain, fear and suffering to survive in the environment/framework we exist in, because it is effective at making us avoid doing things which are a threat to our survival. Where your god fails is when it decides to make this universe so that we need suffering to survive (if it existed).
Your viewpoint in a purely naturalistic world isn't even logical. I suppose the evolutionary process should have never developed the ability for humans to feel pain.
As I responded above... Also you're making a mistake comparing evolution to an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being - evolution has none of those attributes.
Physical and emotional negatives are just as important in existing for humanity as positives.
Assuming it is true, your god still chose it to be that way, and being omniscient and omnipotent, could have come up with a system where only the positives were important.
But...but...didn't they say "no" to you as a toddler? So, no suffering for you I guess.
They did. If that's discipline, they did discipline me.
I don't see how it's related to deliberately creating a universe where such a thing as discipline is needed, and at the same time even allowing millions of people to starve to death, be tortured, killed, dying from diseases "god apparently created to "discipline" us", etc. You should try also to look outside the small ways of suffering.
Wow!...just wow. So far, in your all-loving and perfect world, there can't be any "suffering" and human beings should just be automatons with no ability to make a choice. There would be no point of even having any intelligence.
You're inflating changing the mind here. We currently have natural desires and things we naturally avoid, like getting eaten, walking around on flames, we have things wired into our brain, like breathing, which we do unconsciously just like machines.
Giving us the right desires doesn't exclude us having thoughts. It changes our thoughts.
Do you believe in Hell?
And what's the point of having an intelligence according to you?
Sure thing, a person on death row can argue against the law by which the consequences of their actions occur.
Please clarify this and how it's relevant.
Really. If it's such a easy scenario, without looking at the rest of life on the planet, show me historically where the proliferation of any human group relied on the sacrifice of homosexuals not having children.
The entire proliferation of a group doesn't have to rely on it, just as it doesn't have to rely on having a 5% bigger or smaller nose or other minor changes like that. It doesn't have to give that much of an advantage, it can still be selected for.
I gave it as a response to how I make sense of it. I think this explanation makes sense. It should be easy to see how it could benefit a population to have a group which doesn't have children (or has less).
Argument from ignorance.
Absolutely not. I did not claim anything to be true or false because it had not been disproved/proved, I simply gave possible explanations for the fact that homosexiality is at least partially genetic and I don't claim to know the origins of it at all.
Fair enough but on the same lines, homosexuals can not use the argument of "being born this way".
I provided evidence that homosexuality is genetic. I did not claim to know the origins or the reasons why it is genetic, but only gave some possible explanations. The fact that we don't know the origins doesn't disprove the fact that it's at least partially genetic.
Math doesn't lie. In order for something to be considered a norm, it actually has to be a quantitative reality. You are arguing the extreme exception, whether in the case of humanity or any other life form.
Abbarant has negative connotations, that's what I'm arguing against. You might as well have stated that "nature declares jews to be abbarant", because they're a minority in the human population. So my point was that nature doesn't declare homosexuality to be negative in any way.
I'm only talking about those that do,
Then please don't just use the word "homosexual" here, because then you're not saying what you mean, and you're just contributing to reinforcing stereotypes and generalizations.
like people with handicaps that have managed to delude themselves and attempt to create a delusion with outsiders as their condition should be viewed simply as a "challenge". (Granted, I think that originates more from loved ones around them versus internally.)
I think replacing "idiot" with "mentally challenged" and similar words weren't attempts to delude them, but to cut off the negative connotations other people had brought to the words like "idiot". Many people call other people "idiots" for being stupid, obviously mentally challenged and people who know them don't want the prejudice which the words have gathered to be attached to them.
Some homosexuals are just like some people with handicaps (or those loved ones around them) in that they want society to accept their condition as "normal" so as to limit the negative consequences of said condition.
I don't see why it has to be normal to be accepted, except in societies where diversity is automatically considered a bad thing which must be eliminated. Are you just creating a straw man from your own perception of some people? There are bound to be people belonging to any group who are wrong about some things in any case.
"We can do whatever you can do!"..."but we are going to have to make some modifications and exceptions....but you ignore that."
What are those modifications and exceptions?
P.S. I am thinking I will phase out of these types of conversations since this forum really isn't the place for it and I would rather have discussions on this software and related, versus debates. So, I will certainly respond to your next comments, which is fair...but again, I want to phase out of this. Perhaps we can determine a better location for these types of issue.
I don't think this/other discussion topics have a big influence on how many products Dan manage to sell. In any case, without knowing it, I think he values free speech over profit, and that's one of the things I like so much about this forum. I can't stand the huge game corporation forums which don't allow us to discuss anything controversial, like religion, politics etc. I'll leave it to Dan to tell us if there's something we shouldn't discuss on his forums, and I'll continue to be active in the religion topic here.
blah, if I understand what you are trying to be unclear about,
It didn't seem entirely clear to me why you said that, but you're welcome to clarify if you want.
just pick another venue and we can continue the debate.
You can propose another venue if you want to, it's not me who wants to move the debate.
Other than that, you are just heckling from the sideline.
I like sharing content with other people in this topic when I find something I think is good on the subject. Just because I haven't given a reply to your message it doesn't mean I will cease to do anything else in the topic.
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What do you mean by this "word"?
That I laughed.
What do you mean by this?
That a theist went on to explain how morals originate from The Bible, Jesus, the ten commandments, God etc., so it argued for an objective morality. Then went I pointed out that many of the things in The Bible (especially The Old Testament) aren't moral at all, the theist claimed that it was because it was "a different culture at the time".
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Okay, no problem.
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I really like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)) term: naturalist.
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I really like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)) term: naturalist.
Yes, covers anything from atheism to deism (in agnosticist units). Even though the word can mean multiple things, which is very annoying if you don't see it in a context where the meaning is clear.
I'm a naturalist.
Also, materialism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism)
(But again it can be confused with materialism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_materialism))
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*artificialist* :)
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iKol
At the New Year celebration in New York, some stupid person who sang Imagine (by John Lennon) in front of the huge crowd just before 00:00 sang "and all religion's true" instead of the real lyrics, "and no religion too".
Not only doesn't it make any sense whatsoever (many religions are incompatible), but his ridiculous response was:
"Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world were u could believe what u wanted that's all."
Being able to believe what you wanted to isn't the same as that it's true. And the original lyrics only implied that people didn't believe in it, not that they couldn't.
Oh, and btw, he sang so horribly that I have no idea exactly when in the video he sang the fake lyrics. Sorry.
His cuteness just fell to -1.8 Mikkels, and he is now -3.6 Dashes cool.
Fake lyrics from around 4:30:
Live - New Year Eve 2012 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ourduRjODPA#)
Real lyrics (1:12):
Imagine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DERJ6Jql_EI#)
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Nice blan, actually. I shall paint any house/apartment I get fuchsia, and bring forth the end of the world. >:D
How Gay Marriage Could End Humanity (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrSkmpHp_T0#ws)
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:)
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oh, kol.
(http://i.imgur.com/FULS4.jpg)
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html (http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html)
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Also why does such an omnipresent god let so much trouble be caused by a snake
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Most religions are followed under the:
Well my ancestors believed it so it must be right
Which is basically a guy that believes in aliens going
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Found something awesome...needs mo' photo!
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I cried.
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seems legit
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What is this lyrics... in BLA'S RELIGION THREAD?!?!?!
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What is this lyrics... in BLA'S RELIGION THREAD?!?!?!
BLA'S PHEMY!
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inb4 usforums integrates into reddit
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(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7gsmvLtqh1rt8sgdo1_1280.png)
or tumblr posts that likely come from reddit
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original -> 4chan -> reddit -> tumblr+9gag -> memebase
^original
the cycle of the internet
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This blog is simply the best.
http://www.atheistrev.com/2012/08/where-is-jesus-when-people-starve.html (http://www.atheistrev.com/2012/08/where-is-jesus-when-people-starve.html)
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On the converse, I think it's healthy for adults to have a connection to their imaginations, as a god figure does not clearly sever all connection they have to reality. For example, my mother is very religious, especially recently, but she doesn't constantly talk about how she is going to go to heaven or something like that; she feels she should try to do good for the world while she is alive.
I don't see any problem with having an imagination. You can have a very good imagination, the problem is just if you believe the things you imagine without reason. I can easily invent an electric, flying pillow monster and a magic spider with a long white beard and UV-vision, etc. That's just imagination, it has nothing to do with whether I actually believe in it.
In response to the Santa Claus thing, I don't think you spoil everything about Santa Claus if children find out about the truth. Isn't it still exciting even if some family member puts on a costume and hands out presents etc. At least I saw my uncle dress up as Santa Claus when I was a child, but I don't remember that it ruined the happening for me. Anyway, that doesn't really matter to my point.
I suggest continuing the discussion here from Politics (http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php/topic,3221.msg110435.html#msg110435) as Atomic said.
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The problem there lies that most of those people, if they didn't have the realized imagination, would simply have nothing that they imagine and go along as boring drones. Most people that are atheist are either complete dicks (á la /r/atheism) or are the types of people that tend to imagine things more. In my personal opinion, realized imagination is better than no imagination at all, as that means that the person is actually thinking and evaluating. Even if they are taught this as a young child, they conclusions that they arrive at, while similar to what they are taught, usually are not exactly the same. You can't have religion in beings that don't have language and complex thought.
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The problem there lies that most of those people, if they didn't have the realized imagination, would simply have nothing that they imagine and go along as boring drones. Most people that are atheist are either complete dicks (á la /r/atheism) or are the types of people that tend to imagine things more.
What a generalization to say you know that most atheists belong to two simple categories like that. "Most of you atheists are either complete dicks or you tend to imagine things more." What. Where is your evidence of this? Do you have any surveys or anything to support that?
Also, you seem to say most atheists are either dicks or tend to imagine things more - at the same time you're saying you think the problem for people without religion is their lack of imagination - in other words, you're either contradicting yourself, or indirectly saying most atheists are actually just dicks but just don't want to admit it. What do you actually think?
In my personal opinion, realized imagination is better than no imagination at all, as that means that the person is actually thinking and evaluating.
False dilemma. Nobody has to choose between believing in their imagination or not having any imagination at all.
Even if they are taught this as a young child, they conclusions that they arrive at, while similar to what they are taught, usually are not exactly the same.
If my parents teach me the magic fairy in the garden is purple, but I arrive to the conclusion it's magenta, I don't see why it even matters.
You can't have religion in beings that don't have language and complex thought.
Superstitions similar to those found in many religions, such as believing that worshipping affects a lot of things in reality, has been observed in many animals.
Superstition [HD] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWo3kTYb8W0#ws)
I don't see your point though. Assuming the statement is true, why is it even relevant? For example, you could say you can't understand a Harry Potter book without language and complex thought... But you can still live a perfectly fine life and have language and complex thought without a Harry Potter book.
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Most people that are atheist are either complete dicks (á la /r/atheism) or are the types of people that tend to imagine things more.
Nothing is black and white like that ever, except for math. And I'm going to say that /r/atheism is probably a really small percentage of all the atheists that are even alive right now.
For the most part I agree with what Bla said other than this:
False dilemma. Nobody has to choose between believing in their imagination or not having any imagination at all.
in which case it was never implied that those were the only two options. Darv just stated that one was better than the other.
And in my opinion I find boring drones to be a better option. Why should the opposing side be more preferable than no side at all? -15 is further from 15 than 0 is.
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(http://i.imgur.com/wkfdiIR.png)
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False dilemma. Nobody has to choose between believing in their imagination or not having any imagination at all.
in which case it was never implied that those were the only two options. Darv just stated that one was better than the other.
The problem there lies that most of those people, if they didn't have the realized imagination, would simply have nothing that they imagine and go along as boring drones.
Also kol vh, that's a funny argument I've often seen in some clueless forms. :b There are also secular vacations, and if religion disappeared, you could simply replace their holidays with new, secular ones.
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Nothing is black and white like that ever, except for math. And I'm going to say that /r/atheism is probably a really small percentage of all the atheists that are even alive right now.
uh what about +/-
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except for math.
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yeah that mean's that math is the only thing that is black and white
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BlaSPHEMY apart... This is so tricky. In fact as tricky as quantum physics. Yeah you can tell me all about quarks but if you don't fully explain it and explain to me as has been explained, it is all guess to me.
Same with the idea of a God. The idea of His existence is ancient, billions of people took that for granted, as I do, and unless "I've" been proven wrong, he exists.
May well be all started with a guy, who knew the cycles of the earth and sun, who was able to "predict" when is going to rain, that used this for a means of control based upon divine. This being the case he himself could then declare his "divinity", rater than choose a divine being to take the credits for his knowledge.
I choose to believe in a bigger presence than myself. His existence can't be proven, can't be measured, can't be weighted. But just like with blind love, or love at first sight, I choose to believe in this.
I find that this believe helps me to keep myself in check, not going all supreme and righteous on my fellow human brothers. This I think is the most useful aspect of God in our society. Balance.
Now, have this been used throughout the ages to control people? Yes.
Doesn't mean I'll invalidate the core ideal because of the manipulations of people that came after the idea itself. Making an analogy, just like with communism. The manifesto is good, and in it's nature righteous, just like Bla said. All the countries that used this manifesto usurped these ideals, and it doesn't invalidate the idea of communism itself, is still a good idea.
Same with God. Good idea, and the nefarious behavior of the people that usurped this idea won't make me stop thinking that the idea is good.
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People need to learn to be more tolerable with each other's opinions. I don't feel like listing out the flaws that reader made, but man there's so much hatred in that statement. I feel people get offended too quickly when I say "I'm atheist" or "I don't believe in god." It doesn't mean I am a bad person or that I hate god or religion, it just simply means I don't believe in god... so much unnecessary tension between people these days.
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People writing things like that are the ones ruining USA kol.
I never understood extremist christians, athiests, muslims, etc. . .
What is 'extremist'?
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People need to learn to be more tolerable with each other's opinions. I don't feel like listing out the flaws that reader made, but man there's so much hatred in that statement. I feel people get offended too quickly when I say "I'm atheist" or "I don't believe in god." It doesn't mean I am a bad person or that I hate god or religion, it just simply means I don't believe in god... so much unnecessary tension between people these days.
From Christians that ask my religion, for whatever reason, I often get some form of shock, like "holy shit you can just not believe in god?" but they don't say that, but that's what their face looks like. Though there are quite a lot of people that'll say "I don't really have a religion", or just outright "I'm agnostic/atheist". At least that's what I've noticed.
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People need to learn to be more tolerable with each other's opinions. I don't feel like listing out the flaws that reader made, but man there's so much hatred in that statement. I feel people get offended too quickly when I say "I'm atheist" or "I don't believe in god." It doesn't mean I am a bad person or that I hate god or religion, it just simply means I don't believe in god... so much unnecessary tension between people these days.
From Christians that ask my religion, for whatever reason, I often get some form of shock, like "holy shit you can just not believe in god?" but they don't say that, but that's what their face looks like. Though there are quite a lot of people that'll say "I don't really have a religion", or just outright "I'm agnostic/atheist". At least that's what I've noticed.
My point is that there ARE people who may become offended if you tell them "I'm atheist." I am not saying that EVERYONE who believes in a god or is religious is going to hate you, but I assure you that there are going to be people who are going to be offended, coming from my experience.
This one person from middle school last year just outright hated me from the point I told him I was atheist.
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I've never experienced people looking down on me for my atheism like that in Denmark. Even though there are occasional cases of religious idiocy and all that, but luckily not to the extent it seems like in USA.
Most people here seem mostly apathetic about it. Too apathetic I would say. Too many seem so apathetic about it that they don't mind the fact that the church still receives millions of DKK from the state every year from taxes and the duties they have, such as registering births, that really should be state duties. I think the biggest problem here is that the broad population has so little interest in it that they have no clue they're atheist but think that being atheist means being strongly antireligious. And then again I have read plenty of people on Danish internet forums who go about saying "atheists are just as bad as religious extremists" "science doesn't have all the answers so it's really as bad as religion" and all that nonsense.
How sad that we as a society still hasn't managed to progress beyond such stupidity. It is a disgrace.
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I like the last line "being able to practice what can only be called evil" I'm pretty sure being an atheist basically means that you don't "practice" anything. So rather it is a lack of practice. As a side note I hope that person won't/hasn't reproduced.
Personally I really don't care if people are uber religious. Most religions preach about doing good things and while the people who believe in this religion don't always (or even most of the time) follow the moral code set by their religion, religion can lead to good things. I just hate it when someone shoves it down my throat that they are right or try to include God as being the reason all things happen.
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Take a look at this:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/ (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/)
To the extent that you can find good things in Christianity and Islam you'll have to cherry pick. Of course you can always simply ignore the bad parts and pretend that Christianity is good. But the truth is that it's clearly not - and that is equally evident from it's evil influence. Thanks to that an entire millennium has been spent where people have been killed for being gay, atheist... people they thought were witches were killed, people who spoke out against their worldview such as world being flat were killed, people were sent to conquer other lands and purge those who did not share their superstitions, pretty much every oppressive fascist bandit government has come to power using christian ideas as arguments to support their actions, from Hitler's delusional fear of jews... And the remnants of this poison we still see in society today which has not yet progressed beyond the point where bigotry and prejudice doesn't remain... we see it every time the American evangelicals fly to Uganda to set up laws to kill gays now that they can't do it in USA, we see it when the conservative idiots in Russia speak of burning people in ovens, we see it when Taliban buries people alive.... I do not understand for one second how people can remain apathetic of that. The sooner this pollution can vanish from the surface of the Earth the better.
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Holy books have been re-written over and over again and it's very possible the writers slipped in their own prejudices, that accumulated over centuries.
The point of Christianity was "be good to others and you will be rewarded when you die", and religion is so strong i wouldn't be surprised if people hundreds of years ago warped and used it as a controlling tool.
Point is take the scripts with a grain of salt and not as a solid resource for either side of the argument, they're probably like a written version of chinese whispers
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Holy books have been re-written over and over again and it's very possible the writers slipped in their own prejudices, that accumulated over centuries.
Even if that's true, we should take them for what they are - the versions people cling to today, not what they "should have been". The ancient versions that no longer exist and nobody believes in are irrelevant today.
The point of Christianity was "be good to others and you will be rewarded when you die", and religion is so strong i wouldn't be surprised if people hundreds of years ago warped and used it as a controlling tool.
Based on what do you say that is the whole point of Christianity? If the original versions had been lost, how can you say what the original versions meant to say?
Christianity is based on a book with hundreds of pages, many of which up and down are filled with barbaric moral commandments. Many of the commandments in it contradict other parts, and I'm not just speaking Old-New Testament, the NT has its bad sides too.
In any case the Bible that christians believe in today which has actual relevance to the world and actually affects it IS a controlling tool - it contains morbid ideas telling people to kill innocent people.
Point is take the scripts with a grain of salt and not as a solid resource for either side of the argument, they're probably like a written version of chinese whispers
They're not a solid source of anything. Neither morals nor truth. That is why it is extremely dangerous when people take them seriously and think they are.
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I've never experienced people looking down on me for my atheism like that in Denmark. Even though there are occasional cases of religious idiocy and all that, but luckily not to the extent it seems like in USA.
Most people here seem mostly apathetic about it. Too apathetic I would say. Too many seem so apathetic about it that they don't mind the fact that the church still receives millions of DKK from the state every year from taxes and the duties they have, such as registering births, that really should be state duties. I think the biggest problem here is that the broad population has so little interest in it that they have no clue they're atheist but think that being atheist means being strongly antireligious. And then again I have read plenty of people on Danish internet forums who go about saying "atheists are just as bad as religious extremists" "science doesn't have all the answers so it's really as bad as religion" and all that nonsense.
How sad that we as a society still hasn't managed to progress beyond such stupidity. It is a disgrace.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure Denmark is different from the United States. There are people who are assholes and/or idiots here, and all I can do is get used to it. I may have made it sound like a big deal when it's not, but it's something that just bothers me sometimes. Unnecessary stress ;_;
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:P
If Jesus was a Conservative (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkKPtUywY-8#ws)
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kol I'm laughing so much
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A good video.
John 3:16 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i0N1orb5Wg#)
And a ranting lunatic. Enjoy.
Hagee Tells Atheists To Leave The Country b/c They Are Not Wanted & Won't Be Missed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75b1FMzGTB8#ws)
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mfw Hagee is an intolerant dunce and my parents and grandparent love his services /s
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A good discussion of the absolute "morality" of christianity.
Christian Apologetics: Hitler can't help you. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt5gLf455Q8#ws)
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Kol the ending
"You Send Yourself To Hell" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaJgLBoB_Pw#ws)
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"the biggest piece of evidence supporting creationism imo is that oranges are pre-sliced" hmm true
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Well that's still a more convincing argument than the modern cultivated bananas fitting so very perfectly and smoothly into our mouth.
In other news, Saudi Arabia has now officially decided that all atheists are terrorists.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/02/atheists-classified-terrorists-new-saudi-arabian-laws_n_5075129.html
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Well that's still a more convincing argument than the modern cultivated bananas fitting so very perfectly and smoothly into our mouth.
just like a pēnis
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i thought it was fit into the hand
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It's both! So amazing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4
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http://www.theonion.com/articles/biologists-confirm-god-evolved-from-chimpanzee-dei,35755/
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Kol that article is hilarious. Awesome. :P
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i feel bad for peopl who are forced to be religious
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I'm really proud of everyone for having such a civil conversation about a potentially contentious topic.
Thanks!
I was scared to open this topic. I thought I was about to peek into an inter-universal war.
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Hypocricy. I wonder what people would say if you got 15% discount for pledging to be an atheist in a restaurant.
...And if prayer is so amazing, couldn't they just pray to have the food conjured up from nowhere. That'd solve a lot of hunger problems around the world too... Oh right, we can't have prayers that affect the real world. No matter how many hundreds of millions of people who pray every day, we still live in the same world where millions of people must starve every day.
It's puzzling how people can believe in such magic to me, but to give a discount for it... Hopefully they accept prayers to the Flying Spaghetti Monster too?
(http://i2.cdn.turner.com/dr/hln/www/release/sites/default/files/imagecache/textarticle_640/2014/07/31/jordansmith.jpg)
http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/07/31/restaurant-praying-discount-marys-gourmet-diner?hpt=hp_t4
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Oh wow....
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A store that gives discounts for praying in public is a store this guy won't shop at.
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Hypocricy. I wonder what people would say if you got 15% discount for pledging to be an atheist in a restaurant.
...And if prayer is so amazing, couldn't they just pray to have the food conjured up from nowhere. That'd solve a lot of hunger problems around the world too... Oh right, we can't have prayers that affect the real world. No matter how many hundreds of millions of people who pray every day, we still live in the same world where millions of people must starve every day.
It's puzzling how people can believe in such magic to me, but to give a discount for it... Hopefully they accept prayers to the Flying Spaghetti Monster too?
(http://i2.cdn.turner.com/dr/hln/www/release/sites/default/files/imagecache/textarticle_640/2014/07/31/jordansmith.jpg)
http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/07/31/restaurant-praying-discount-marys-gourmet-diner?hpt=hp_t4
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These people lolol.
But Bla, you've got to consider, there are also people out there (like me ^.^) who don't believe in divine magic (if that's what it's called), we believe religion doesn't exactly mean what it says, that religion is just a big metaphor.
Like God doesn't directly intervene with the Universe, but has created the initial Big Bang in a certain way so all of things he wanted to happen would happen. You see what I'm saying?
Take a look at this:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/ (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/)
To the extent that you can find good things in Christianity and Islam you'll have to cherry pick. Of course you can always simply ignore the bad parts and pretend that Christianity is good. But the truth is that it's clearly not - and that is equally evident from it's evil influence. Thanks to that an entire millennium has been spent where people have been killed for being gay, atheist... people they thought were witches were killed, people who spoke out against their worldview such as world being flat were killed, people were sent to conquer other lands and purge those who did not share their superstitions, pretty much every oppressive fascist bandit government has come to power using christian ideas as arguments to support their actions, from Hitler's delusional fear of jews... And the remnants of this poison we still see in society today which has not yet progressed beyond the point where bigotry and prejudice doesn't remain... we see it every time the American evangelicals fly to Uganda to set up laws to kill gays now that they can't do it in USA, we see it when the conservative idiots in Russia speak of burning people in ovens, we see it when Taliban buries people alive.... I do not understand for one second how people can remain apathetic of that. The sooner this pollution can vanish from the surface of the Earth the better.
A large portion of Muslims are extremists. You shouldn't bias a religion by what it's followers do.
For example, Muslims were never told to shun or kill gays, just not to encourage that (I'm sorry if this offends you >.<)
But yeah, I often see religious people as stupid. I especially dislike religious Christians. I've heard about this atheist guy who was sightseeing at a pond or something, and this priest walks up to him and asks him if he would like to pray at his church (Well of course everyone you run into should be the same religion as you! ::)). The tourist declines, explaining that he's atheist. Of course, the priest gets mad at him and starts ranting on about creationism shite etc.
But I don't immediately judge people by their religion. When they start acting like that^, I start judging.
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But Bla, you've got to consider, there are also people out there (like me ^.^) who don't believe in divine magic (if that's what it's called),
I don't deny that at all
we believe religion doesn't exactly mean what it says, that religion is just a big metaphor.
Like God doesn't directly intervene with the Universe, but has created the initial Big Bang in a certain way so all of things he wanted to happen would happen. You see what I'm saying?
Yes, but that raises more problems. For example:
- If your god is good, why does it not directly intervene in the universe to prevent innocent people from suffering? How can it sit by and watch world wars unfold and millions of innocent people get oppressed and killed?
- Why did it create the initial Big Bang in this certain way, that would inevitably result in all the suffering we see on Earth? It was omniscient, so it knew it would happen, it was omnipotent, so it was capable of preventing it, and if it is also omnibenevolent, it would have prevented it, and thus is incompatible with the universe we see. In creating a universe where natural disasters are inevitably bound to kill innocent lives, we can see what kind of mentality such a god would have. A mentality that isn't concerned with random people dying every day for no reason. That doesn't seem compatible with the presumably "good" gods of many religions at all.
In addition to these issues, there's no evidence for the claim that the universe was created by a god. It simply raises the question, where did the god come from?
And I often see people saying religious books are meant to be taken metaphorically. While I appreciate they don't want to take all the barbaric verses serious, that is really all I can take it for. I don't see any reason why a divine being would be so unclear in its communication that it sends a holy book down to Earth, that so many people end up committing atrocities in the name of. The omniscient god would know this was bound to happen. If it didn't want it to happen, it could've just freaking said what it wanted people to believe in the book. :P To me it seems like they just want to bend the meaning of the religion to whatever they themselves feel most comfortable with.
So in the end, while I don't have a problem with people believing the Big Bang was created by a god, whether they want to call it the one from the Bible or Quran or a unicorn, in the end, I don't see the point of it.
A large portion of Muslims are extremists. You shouldn't bias a religion by what it's followers do.
If the religion is based on a holy book created by a presumably pretty clever and almighty god, a large portion of people committing barbaric acts in the name of the book is a sign that the god didn't achieve what it intended with the book. And again - if the god is so almighty and knows the future etc., it knew what the result would be of all its actions and holy books, so I do think a religion of a good god is somewhat incompatible with all these atrocities.
But I agree the religions must ultimately be defined by the text in their holy books and not by what their followers do.
However, I'm not a big fan of all the metaphorical interpretations for the reasons I gave above. When I see the Bible verses, like Leviticus 20:13, I don't make up a fuzzy interpretation for it that feels more comfortable. I read what it says, "a man should not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, if they do, they should be killed", and think "if this stuff can end up in your holy book under supervision of a deity, your religion is plain simply crazy."
I'm not as familiar with the Quran (I know you don't believe in the Bible) but it looks to me like there are plenty of examples in there (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/cruelty/long.html) that look similar to the stuff in the Bible.
For example, Muslims were never told to shun or kill gays, just not to encourage that (I'm sorry if this offends you >.<)
The Quran isn't as bad as the Bible when it comes to view on homosexuality
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/gay/long.html
But from the verses here (click the numbers), I'm still disappointed. Homosexuality isn't unnatural at all (not that I see any reason why it matters).
If it truly wanted to be a good religion, its god should've gotten rid of those verses and written "treat LGBT people as equals". Maybe that'd have made Iran, Saudi Arabia, Taleban and others think twice before killing thousands of LGBT people and actually have made the world a better place (at least on that issue).
I've heard about this atheist guy who was sightseeing at a pond or something, and this priest walks up to him and asks him if he would like to pray at his church (Well of course everyone you run into should be the same religion as you! ::)). The tourist declines, explaining that he's atheist. Of course, the priest gets mad at him and starts ranting on about creationism shite etc.
But I don't immediately judge people by their religion. When they start acting like that^, I start judging.
Agreed.
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But Bla, you've got to consider, there are also people out there (like me ^.^) who don't believe in divine magic (if that's what it's called),
I don't deny that at all
we believe religion doesn't exactly mean what it says, that religion is just a big metaphor.
Like God doesn't directly intervene with the Universe, but has created the initial Big Bang in a certain way so all of things he wanted to happen would happen. You see what I'm saying?
Yes, but that raises more problems. For example:
- If your god is good, why does it not directly intervene in the universe to prevent innocent people from suffering? How can it sit by and watch world wars unfold and millions of innocent people get oppressed and killed?
- Why did it create the initial Big Bang in this certain way, that would inevitably result in all the suffering we see on Earth? It was omniscient, so it knew it would happen, it was omnipotent, so it was capable of preventing it, and if it is also omnibenevolent, it would have prevented it, and thus is incompatible with the universe we see. In creating a universe where natural disasters are inevitably bound to kill innocent lives, we can see what kind of mentality such a god would have. A mentality that isn't concerned with random people dying every day for no reason. That doesn't seem compatible with the presumably "good" gods of many religions at all.
In addition to these issues, there's no evidence for the claim that the universe was created by a god. It simply raises the question, where did the god come from?
And I often see people saying religious books are meant to be taken metaphorically. While I appreciate they don't want to take all the barbaric verses serious, that is really all I can take it for. I don't see any reason why a divine being would be so unclear in its communication that it sends a holy book down to Earth, that so many people end up committing atrocities in the name of. The omniscient god would know this was bound to happen. If it didn't want it to happen, it could've just freaking said what it wanted people to believe in the book. :P To me it seems like they just want to bend the meaning of the religion to whatever they themselves feel most comfortable with.
So in the end, while I don't have a problem with people believing the Big Bang was created by a god, whether they want to call it the one from the Bible or Quran or a unicorn, in the end, I don't see the point of it.
A large portion of Muslims are extremists. You shouldn't bias a religion by what it's followers do.
If the religion is based on a holy book created by a presumably pretty clever and almighty god, a large portion of people committing barbaric acts in the name of the book is a sign that the god didn't achieve what it intended with the book. And again - if the god is so almighty and knows the future etc., it knew what the result would be of all its actions and holy books, so I do think a religion of a good god is somewhat incompatible with all these atrocities.
But I agree the religions must ultimately be defined by the text in their holy books and not by what their followers do.
However, I'm not a big fan of all the metaphorical interpretations for the reasons I gave above. When I see the Bible verses, like Leviticus 20:13, I don't make up a fuzzy interpretation for it that feels more comfortable. I read what it says, "a man should not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, if they do, they should be killed", and think "if this stuff can end up in your holy book under supervision of a deity, your religion is plain simply crazy."
I'm not as familiar with the Quran (I know you don't believe in the Bible) but it looks to me like there are plenty of examples in there (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/cruelty/long.html) that look similar to the stuff in the Bible.
For example, Muslims were never told to shun or kill gays, just not to encourage that (I'm sorry if this offends you >.<)
The Quran isn't as bad as the Bible when it comes to view on homosexuality
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/gay/long.html
But from the verses here (click the numbers), I'm still disappointed. Homosexuality isn't unnatural at all (not that I see any reason why it matters).
If it truly wanted to be a good religion, its god should've gotten rid of those verses and written "treat LGBT people as equals". Maybe that'd have made Iran, Saudi Arabia, Taleban and others think twice before killing thousands of LGBT people and actually have made the world a better place (at least on that issue).
I've heard about this atheist guy who was sightseeing at a pond or something, and this priest walks up to him and asks him if he would like to pray at his church (Well of course everyone you run into should be the same religion as you! ::)). The tourist declines, explaining that he's atheist. Of course, the priest gets mad at him and starts ranting on about creationism shite etc.
But I don't immediately judge people by their religion. When they start acting like that^, I start judging.
Agreed.
These are all exemplary arguments (seriously, you might even find success as an attorney(but thats up to you ;3)), and I see your point when you say God is evil for letting us suffer, but actually, I think it's good. It's like a parent and a child. If God made the world with no problems and CUPCAKES FOR EVERYONE!, we would be sorta dependent on him. I think God is trying to teach us to manage ourselves. Look at us. We're sentient, we're civil, yet we've abused our power so much and now look what we've gotten ourselves into.
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It also assumes that a god actually cares. An eternal omnipotent being would have nothing to lose.
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These are all exemplary arguments (seriously, you might even find success as an attorney(but thats up to you ;3)), and I see your point when you say God is evil for letting us suffer, but actually, I think it's good. It's like a parent and a child. If God made the world with no problems and CUPCAKES FOR EVERYONE!, we would be sorta dependent on him. I think God is trying to teach us to manage ourselves. Look at us. We're sentient, we're civil, yet we've abused our power so much and now look what we've gotten ourselves into.
Thanks :P but I see no problem in being dependent on a god. The god is omnipotent, so it could easily help humanity. Why would it teach us to manage ourselves if it could simply help us forever without problems?
It's like if Belgium had an infinite storage of aid supplies and an infinite workforce ready to distribute it without causing any strain on Belgium at all, but France got flooded, and Belgium doesn't ever send any aid, because it doesn't want France to become dependent on it, even though it'd have no negative consequences. That's wouldn't be very nice of Belgium, would it?
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A ha ha! This is where you got me thinking ;)
What exactly would be the point of living if God helped us endlessly? Success would have no meaning, everyone would have everything, etc. There's just no goal to achieve anymore.
Your analogy has a flaw, though. We, humanity, are inflicting our demise on ourselves. France, in your analogy, has experienced a natrual disaster that it cannot control/has no control over. The flood in your analogy, I imagine, would be some sort of Satanic force. I would imagine God would start involving himself if this happened.
However, if France started bombing itself, why does Belgium need to do anything? France needs to start solving it's own problems, not depend on a totally unrelated country to mediate it's activity and wellbeing?
Also, if God did start helping us in (when we are in the situation we are in currently) we would start becoming dependent on him. This then leads to taking God for granted to the point we start nuking ourselves expecting him to do something about it.
See, being God and handling your Universe(s) is like childcare.
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I meant that Bla made an error in his analogy.
I didn't mean the flood WAS a Satanic force, I meant that the flood would REPRESENT a Satanic force IRL.
We aren't putting Satanic forces on ourselves, just analogically bombing ourselves.
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What exactly would be the point of living if God helped us endlessly? Success would have no meaning, everyone would have everything, etc. There's just no goal to achieve anymore.
What's the goal? Success? I don't believe in god-given goals. I think humans define their goals. If you think success is the goal and a god ensures that, then the goal is achieved. If the goal becomes meaningless when it is achieved, the goal seems pointless to me in the first place.
What's the point of living if god did not help us endlessly? I think it is to be happy. If a god then helped us to be happy all the time, does that make life meaningless? No, I would say the opposite.
Your analogy has a flaw, though. We, humanity, are inflicting our demise on ourselves. France, in your analogy, has experienced a natrual disaster that it cannot control/has no control over. The flood in your analogy, I imagine, would be some sort of Satanic force. I would imagine God would start involving himself if this happened.
Now you're attributing properties to my natural disaster that have nothing to do with what I said.
The flood in my analogy is a natural disaster like any other in the history of the planet, caused by nature/the laws of physics, being plain simply the uncaring laws they are, and not magic forces to make our lives pleasant or unpleasant. The flood is not a satanic force which I do not believe exist as I see no evidence for that. It is not created by humanity either. There are countless natural disasters that humanity hasn't created, and imagine this disaster to be just like one of those.
However, if France started bombing itself, why does Belgium need to do anything? France needs to start solving it's own problems, not depend on a totally unrelated country to mediate it's activity and wellbeing?
That's irrelevant to my example. Coming up with this different example doesn't solve the case for the good god in my previous example.
But to reply to it anyway, France is not one unit, but consists of millions of people. If a few of them are responsible for the bombing causing millions fo suffer, I do think Belgium has a responsibility to prevent that from happening if it is capable, the same way I do think a god isn't good if it's capable of preventing the holocaust, but sits idle.
In the other case that they all somehow collectively agree to bomb themselves, then it's fine.
Also, if God did start helping us in (when we are in the situation we are in currently) we would start becoming dependent on him. This then leads to taking God for granted to the point we start nuking ourselves expecting him to do something about it.
And what's the problem? The nukes would hit nobody if it took care of it. Currently on the other hand, people in fact do die from war and disasters, even though we don't take it from granted.
Also if we have mentalities that make us want to launch nukes on ourselves if he helps us surely I think he made a flaw when making the universe that gave rise to us and not a humanity that cared for itself. ;)
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You have squandered my mind.
Well done.
I still believe in God, though.
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A ha ha! This is where you got me thinking ;)
What exactly would be the point of living if God helped us endlessly? Success would have no meaning, everyone would have everything, etc. There's just no goal to achieve anymore.
Your analogy has a flaw, though. We, humanity, are inflicting our demise on ourselves. France, in your analogy, has experienced a natrual disaster that it cannot control/has no control over. The flood in your analogy, I imagine, would be some sort of Satanic force. I would imagine God would start involving himself if this happened.
However, if France started bombing itself, why does Belgium need to do anything? France needs to start solving it's own problems, not depend on a totally unrelated country to mediate it's activity and wellbeing?
Also, if God did start helping us in (when we are in the situation we are in currently) we would start becoming dependent on him. This then leads to taking God for granted to the point we start nuking ourselves expecting him to do something about it.
See, being God and handling your Universe(s) is like childcare.
BUT do not forget God is all knowing the wisest Being next to what ever made him/her he could help us and teach us to be independent. (BTW i'm agnostic) :)
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That statement is very set-aside to other beliefs.
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how so? :-X
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I believe in science :P
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i am of the religion of scientology it is very good sometimes i meet tom cruise he is quite nice thank you much
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You have squandered my mind.
Well done.
I still believe in God, though.
yeah I did too when I was twelve.
here's something for your consideration: you said you believed that god may have created the big bang. that's a prime example of something called 'god of the gaps'. throughout the history of religion, more specific to Christianity, god has been blamed for the gaps in our knowledge.
why is there so much diversity to life? god did it.
why did all these fossilized animals die out? god did it.
where are the missing links? god did it.
the entire history of science has continually shrank the role god played in the universe to people. we now know that the diversity of life is attributable to evolution by natural selection. we know the fossilized animals died out because of an asteroid or a comet. we've found a plethora of missing links, transitional fossils.
the problem with the god of the gaps is that science will never stop seeking out and finding answers. you say god could've been responsible for the big bang. yes, this is true. she could have also been responsible for literally every other thing we couldn't explain at one point. why do wheels work? god did it.
I feel like sooner or later we will conclusively pin down the cause of the big bang, and when we do that, it'll be one more place god was removed from. the overwhelming problem with putting god in these gaps is that she's confined to a smaller and smaller box with every discovery made.
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You have squandered my mind.
Well done.
I still believe in God, though.
yeah I did too when I was twelve.
here's something for your consideration: you said you believed that god may have created the big bang. that's a prime example of something called 'god of the gaps'. throughout the history of religion, more specific to Christianity, god has been blamed for the gaps in our knowledge.
why is there so much diversity to life? god did it.
why did all these fossilized animals die out? god did it.
where are the missing links? god did it.
the entire history of science has continually shrank the role god played in the universe to people. we now know that the diversity of life is attributable to evolution by natural selection. we know the fossilized animals died out because of an asteroid or a comet. we've found a plethora of missing links, transitional fossils.
the problem with the god of the gaps is that science will never stop seeking out and finding answers. you say god could've been responsible for the big bang. yes, this is true. she could have also been responsible for literally every other thing we couldn't explain at one point. why do wheels work? god did it.
I feel like sooner or later we will conclusively pin down the cause of the big bang, and when we do that, it'll be one more place god was removed from. the overwhelming problem with putting god in these gaps is that she's confined to a smaller and smaller box with every discovery made.
This is definitely a solid point, but to play devils advocate here, people will always be able to attribute God to the things that cause science to work. For example, Gravity could be explained by God creating it. When we found out it was because of mass, you could still say that God made it so mass creates gravity, and so on and so on. I am not particularly religious myself (I'm mostly in it for the holidays, lmao) but this is definitely a possibility
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that is fine. they can say what they like, but if they were wise, they would learn a lesson and stop trying to insert god into gaps that will sooner or later be filled in by the natural progress of science.
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I agree with you there, But I honestly say that if it makes them feel better to think that there is a higher power then all the power to them. I personally do not, but them thinking that there is doesn't effect me in the slightest.
An exception to this is if they start trying to force me to believe, or denying rights to people just because "God said so"
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unfortunately, those last two things are more common than not in the history of religion.
you can't legislate morality but that doesn't stop them from trying, even now.
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Very true, but in my eyes it's calmed way down, especially with the new pope.
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that is fine. they can say what they like, but if they were wise, they would learn a lesson and stop trying to insert god into gaps that will sooner or later be filled in by the natural progress of science.
I don't put God in the Gaps. I try to come up with the most logical explanation (well, most logical for me). I keep God out of anything. I imagine him as not directly influencing the universe but just watching how the world plays out.
Honestly, I don't see the difference inbetween religion and science.
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that is fine. they can say what they like, but if they were wise, they would learn a lesson and stop trying to insert god into gaps that will sooner or later be filled in by the natural progress of science.
I don't put God in the Gaps. I try to come up with the most logical explanation (well, most logical for me). I keep God out of anything. I imagine him as not directly influencing the universe but just watching how the world plays out.
Honestly, I don't see the difference inbetween religion and science.
sci·ence
ˈsīəns/Submit
noun
the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
re·li·gion
riˈlijən/Submit
noun
the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
they are pretty different things, breh. one is based on reasoned study of the natural world, taking in data and interpreting it based on objective reality, the other is based on nothing at all. literally, belief is something drawn from thin air.
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Honestly, I feel that if a god did exist, he'd probably be more of a "watchmaker", than a constant force of interference. He'd have created the universe, or whatever, and just sat back and watched how it played out, as opposed to sticking his hands in his "creation soup"
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This is definitely a solid point, but to play devils advocate here, people will always be able to attribute God to the things that cause science to work. For example, Gravity could be explained by God creating it. When we found out it was because of mass, you could still say that God made it so mass creates gravity, and so on and so on. I am not particularly religious myself (I'm mostly in it for the holidays, lmao) but this is definitely a possibility
But it is also a possibility that it was a leprechaun, Santa Claus, etc. You can really come up with an infinite number of imaginary causes for anything. The problem just is, in doing that, you have a burden of proof. And when there's no evidence or reason to believe a god is the cause of x, the idea is simply worth as little as the idea it was caused by a leprechaun or flying carpet. Until you meet your burden of proof and give reasons for why the god should be the cause of x logically the default position is that the god does not exist, unless you have no problem believing in an infinite number of unjustified imaginary beings anyone comes up with and says is the cause of x.
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This is definitely a solid point, but to play devils advocate here, people will always be able to attribute God to the things that cause science to work. For example, Gravity could be explained by God creating it. When we found out it was because of mass, you could still say that God made it so mass creates gravity, and so on and so on. I am not particularly religious myself (I'm mostly in it for the holidays, lmao) but this is definitely a possibility
But it is also a possibility that it was a leprechaun, Santa Claus, etc. You can really come up with an infinite number of imaginary causes for anything. The problem just is, in doing that, you have a burden of proof. And when there's no evidence or reason to believe a god is the cause of x, the idea is simply worth as little as the idea it was caused by a leprechaun or flying carpet. Until you meet your burden of proof and give reasons for why the god should be the cause of x logically the default position is that the god does not exist, unless you have no problem believing in an infinite number of unjustified imaginary beings anyone comes up with and says is the cause of x.
Like I said before, I'm not religious, but I like to play devil's advocate every once in a while, and I personally agree with you 100%. I'm just saying that religious people will ALWAYS find a way to believe in a (or many) god(s), so no matter how much scientific explaining you do there will always be something like "Well how does x work? Oh, you don't know? Must be God, then."
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Like I said before, I'm not religious, but I like to play devil's advocate every once in a while
Yes yes I know :P Anyway, all good
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odMp7s9ri84
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-wCLzEBSZk
I never understood how lust could be a sin. It's an uncontrollable natural human behavior. You're telling us that we're violating God's will by simply existing as we are?
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I feel like the movie 9 (http://xmovies8.co/movie/9-2009-2/) is an analogy for atheism overpowering Christianity.
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Do religious nuts even think about stuff
like why would god want you to destroy your child's mind by sheltering her this much
(http://cdn1.smosh.com/sites/default/files/ftpuploads/bloguploads/1113/yahoo-answers-2-hell.png)
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I think that looks more like a troll trying to make fun and not an actual serious person.
Anyway by now I guess most people have heard of the Charlie Hebdo shooting yesterday. Sad that religious 'morality' still turns some people into barbarians like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting
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I think that looks more like a troll trying to make fun and not an actual serious person.
There are actual people who fear damnation when they masturbate .-.
I guess most people have heard of the Charlie Hebdo shooting yesterday. Sad that religious 'morality' still turns some people into barbarians like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting
it's people like these that make you feel like defecate standing next to ice cream when you're standing next to Bla
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it's people like these that make you feel like defecate standing next to ice cream when you're standing next to Bla
That doesn't make any sense. However, it is agreeable that these extremist religions will do nothing but bring wars.
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it makes sense in the terms that these guys are such delusional misguided morons that I'm ashamed to know that I'm one of their species
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We all are a part of that species and what they do isn't a result of what you do any more than what I do, so it doesn't make sense. Belonging to an irrelevant category doesn't work like that. You could've said the same for humans vs other animals, having to be ashamed to be a mammal vs other categories and so on. That doesn't make sense. What other people from an arbitrary group does isn't your responsibility simply for belonging to it.
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i'm ashamed to be life
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A recent study of links between religion and altruism and morality in children:
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822%2815%2901167-7.pdf
Of course, some religious peoples' reaction to this was ironically to send violent threats to the researchers. What a good way to convince people the study is false.
Source: http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/viden/naturvidenskab/nyt-studie-religion-goer-boern-egoistiske-og-haevngerrige
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I can prove God does exist. I shall prove the one true God, the one from the bible.
So one morning my alarm went off, but instead of being a bee bee bee noise like usual, it was a beepbadaeep beep. This proves God.
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(http://i.imgur.com/gNNkC78.png)
http://www.breakingburgh.com/schism-erupts-in-pastafarianism-over-the-acceptability-of-plastic-colanders/
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the planets and stars are all shaped like meatballs, and a lot of galaxies are shaped like pasta bows. Irregular galaxies are piles of pasta
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Im atheist and believe in the big bang, but I dont really care what my friends or anyone else thinks
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(http://damn.dog/img/pics/persuade-a-christian-to-become-atheist.jpg)
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I personally believe a slightly altered version of science, but I don't believe religion itself. I do respect religion as people are allowed to believe what they want.
My altered version states that there are parallel universes (an infinite amount of them, to be exact), and they go through a continuous chain of the following: Big bang, universe stuff, big crunch, big bang, universe stuff, big crunch, etc.
And that goes on forever.
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thats a copypasta. i remember reading it a while ago.
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I am an Atheist but am starting to believe in god.
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you smuck I spent 20 minutes writing that and you have the audacity to claim I copy and pasted it
well shit i guess you did write it. This is even more confusing because it is literally a nonsensical ramble about frogs and religion. i give you about a -249/10
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plz support the athetits
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i am god but i'm starting to believe in atheists
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i am a Capitalist but i am starting to believe in communism
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i am evolution and i am starting to believe in christians
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i am offensive and i find these latest posts atheist
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(http://i.imgur.com/oaqACMF.png)
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religion is the utilitarian's worst nightmare
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my unconscious mind is fucking bullshit ok
at the climax of my madness in june from having too much of this fucker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilazodone in my body (i had been taking the maximum allowed dose for about two months)
my unconscious mind convinced my conscious mind, successfully, that god was present with me directly (in this case most likely the unconscious mind was what was doing it) but not really communicating, because even in such a distorted state i was steadfast in my position that that is impossible (not the existence of god-concept, but rather the possibility of god-concept communicating with a real, extant mind)
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The most I tend to do in a religious discussion is clear up misconceptions about God. One of the biggest is people viewing God as a "big man in the sky." Being a Christian, this is far from the case.
The best possible explanation I have is this: Picture the highest possible dimension responsible for the existence of the universe or multiverse or whatever, and then picture that dimension as a living being. Hence the term "I Am" in the Bible. While we can barely grasp the concept of "infinity," God's more than that.
I believe that God made science, and I freakin' love science. :D
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The best possible explanation I have is this: Picture the highest possible dimension responsible for the existence of the universe or multiverse or whatever, and then picture that dimension as a living being. Hence the term "I Am" in the Bible.
I think a problem when discussing religion is using very vague terms. For example the highest possible dimension, what does that actually mean? Is it somehow related to the dimensions of spacetime? How do you know this 'thing' is actually responsible for the universe existing? Or what good reasons are there to think so? And why would you make a leap and picture it as a living being?
The most important of these questions I think is the first one. If we can't make clear claims and describe what we're talking about, there's no way to have a meaningful discussion and verify if it's true.
The god of the Bible regularly intervened in the Earth, do you believe that? Do you believe that as stated in the Bible, plants were created before the Sun?
While we can barely grasp the concept of "infinity," God's more than that.
But what more is it? How do you know? Again I feel it's not a very meaningful discussion about a concept that's more than infinity but beyond barely graspable.
I believe that God made science, and I freakin' love science. :D
But humans made science, why would you say a god did it?
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Well, yes. Science is the manmade measurement of the universe, so my wording was off there... Maybe that's why I like science concepts so much better than the math aspect of it... :/
The thing about trying to put something beyond infinity into words is that there aren't really any words to describe it. That whole "highest dimension" analogy is the closest possible thing I can come up with, and yes, I'm referring to something not bound by time or relative dimension or anything of the sort. I think the Bible has similar issues with wording, especially considering the fact that it was translated and reinterpreted several times over. The only real fundamental thing is Christ (body of a man, soul of God), hence the term "Christian."
Considering how things work in the universe, it makes me wonder why they work that way to begin with. Before the universe existed, did what we know as the laws of physics exist? This is why I make such a leap in assuming it was a living thing. The universe might be chaos, but it's pretty organized chaos. "By chance" is one thing, but where did the concept of "chance" come from, and how did it dictate the beginning of the universe?
Most interventions occurred through events that we can explain through known means. For example: the plagues on Egypt. River turning to blood; an algae bloom or iron-rich minerals being disturbed and carried by the river, which could have caused the animal plagues as well. Flaming hail; meteorites.
I do tend to have trouble explaining interventions such as a lack of food becoming plenty and things like that.
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Remember that event on the International Space Station where algae was growing on the outer hull in the vacuum of space? Plant life is pretty dang resilient. If the Earth was a still-forming cloud of debris surrounded by gas and plasma that would eventually become an atmosphere and the Sun, I don't think it's that far-fetched to theorize that simple plant life like algae could be created from that. Think of it as primordial soup times ten.
It's also possible that the "days" weren't our concept of a day since God isn't bound by time.
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In regards to the religion of Christianity itself, it focuses on what God did for us rather than what we do for God, so it is unique in that aspect and seems to make the most sense to me.
C.S. Lewis covers a ton of these conundrums in his book Mere Christianity and explains things a thousand times better than I ever could. It's a great read regardless of a reader's beliefs.