I went to the kangaroo about 2 hours ago, on the way there I believe I heard a Gater welp. Sounded like she was about 20 feet from me. Calling to God, and Jesus I kept on going. I had to, I was in a bad position to turn back, and running is something you do not want to try. If a gater comes after you they can do about 14mph. Me, I can do about 6mph, but I am short winded. I had decided to take the long way home, away from the same place I heard the Gater. Could have been wrong, but when something like that happens. Do not say something like "it is probably nothing." Because something did welp. And there is nothing but swamp right in that area.
"it is probably nothing." causes neglect to things that are, "probably something."

It's probably nothing.

Maybe jesus sent it to kill you?

You're the chosen one, remember? The gators are out the get the Chosen one.

"it is probably something" causes paranoia, fear, anxiety to something that is "probably nothing".

I'm sure the Gator was just praying... or was it... preying?

eh? heh? yeah? that's a good one! haahah!

kazzmir :-D

Don't make fun of it. Maybe it sounds silly, but I am a non-believer, but are some things that happened in my life that I just explain by saying: "That has been an angel.". So yes, I somehow believe and I thank God ( referring to that supreme force, not to God as the bible mentions it ) everyday. Myself, I am not going to church, not even today on Christmas.

I will never forget when there stood an old man who could not tell me his phone number ( I wanted to call him again and thank him for his help ), who appeared out of nothing with his pre-ancient motorcycle and leather clothes when I ran out of fuel on a lonely road. I was hungry, tired, it was getting dark and I would have to run 2 or 3 hours to the next gas station. There are plenty examples; when I stood at the gas station 2 weeks ago and accidently I did not look at the screen. I only had 5 euros and I filled my tank with 6,69 euros. I was walking in and I tipped out all the cents I had in my pocket. There were exactly 6,69 euros in it.

Who says hes making fun of it? Really, if Jesus needs you up there, he will have to get you up there. There are many ways to do it. Heart attack? No. Thats not fun. Crocodile eating you up? Now thats something Jesus would laugh to.

I once heard gators can only run in a straight line, is that false?

I don't know about that. But Chris not running was stupid. Yes, Gators are very fast in the water. But on land they are not as fast. What are you? A dwarf? A good sprint and you are miles away from The Beast.

It was probably Alex the Unofficial Logo.

If you run it causes a Gator/dog/snake/others to give chase. Do you know what a Gator sounds like? Sometimes sitting here at the house, you can here the gator giving her call. I live in a swamp land, and Gators is common here.

My next door neighbor said he has seen her, he said she is a good sized Gator.

A Gator will break your legs with one hit of her tail.

That makes sense, if she comes at you, and you run straight away from here, and were you meat her. She will see you are leaving, and go back to what she is guarding.

No.

Gators very rarely attack humans, unlike crocodils. It will attack you if it does consider you as a treat, not because you're a prey.

(Wikipedia)

What part of the Bible says this?

Nassauvillian Experience?

Still, I have not encountered a Gator, and had to flee from it. Dogs will give you chase, even if they are not bothering you (never look a dog in his eyes). Snakes, it depends on the snake, some snakes will come after you, you'd better defend yourself against one of those. Others, there is all kinds of life over the earth. Wolves, do not turn you back to them. (learned from the news yesterday.) Bears, pretend to be dead. (You can sing to them.) etc...

Are you telling me that something that is not in the Bible can be true?

When have i ever said that if it is not in the bible, it is not the truth.

Sure it is true that my house is yellow. And I see it, there it is, yellow.

I have said that if something does not line up with God's word, then it is not the truth.

My house is not pink, it has no pink on it.
So if you say you there is pink trim on it. I will look, and if I see no pink trim. I will not believe it is pink.

But if God said your house was pink, then it would be?

Sure, its called re-defining. God would redefine the definition of yellow so it would be pink.

God wouldn't say his house was pink if it wasn't.

Look, my point was if you see something that directly contradicts the bible what do you do? I guess he would believe the bible is right and his own perception is wrong but in that case I guess he must live an interesting life.

I dunno; what would you do if you see something that directly contradicts scientific fact? Hypothetical nothings are fun!

Uh, assume scientific fact is wrong and come up with a better theory?

Ah, you're an idealist. I admire that.

No wonder why most scientific theories make so little sense that they must have been thought up by a retarded 3 year old. Ran out of new ideas to think up.

I don't get it, are you bashing science? Where do you think your computer came from? The bible?

No, it came from my family genealogy.

Oh wait; more than one of these can be correct, I forgot ... perhaps these threads are making me dumber ...

Science came to be because someone/thing had to prove the Bible wrong. So if there were no Bible, there wouldn't be people trying to figure out something better then the 7 days creation theory... Thus, ma boy, yes, Science came from the Bible, and so the computer came from the Bible.

Yes, this is sarcasm.

Most animals are more afraid of you than you are of them.

I'm glad as hell I kept my eyes on the rogue dog I ran into a couple of years ago. It ran off when I pressed forward. Had I backed away, it would have attacked. Note that it wasn't protecting anything, it was just wandering around.

No, he actually understands what science is.

Do you even know what science is? This is a serious question.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: science is a methodology to learn about the natural world through observation and logical deduction while trying to eliminate personal biases. Underlying this methodology is a philosophy, a set of postulates: 1. it is possible to obtain knowledge about the world around us through observation and experimentation. 2. What is true here and now is true there and then, so if A leads to B here and now, that is also true there and then and if you observe B, then A must have happened before.
The first is nescessary because without it there is no point in using experiments or deductive reasoning to begin with. If you do not belief that, fine, any discussion ends there and then but don't cite observtions or logic to justify that position. The second is more subtle and is what verifies a scientific theory or model. Any theory that fails (2) is either wrong or incomplete. Wrong meaning "doesn't give the right answer" and incomplete meaning "only applies under restrictive conditions."
Personal preference can guide research, but it never decides on what is right or wrong. You may not understand a particular theory or model but that is of no consequence because what matters is wether the theory can account for observations. If not, it needs to be modified. In practice, this means going from simpler models to more complicated ones because a theory works until a counter example is found. At that point, a new theory must account for both the old and the new observations. Repeat for all time.

Now then, with that foundation in place, what "scientific theories make so little sense that they must have been thought up by a retarded 3 year old"?
I'll remind you about the fact that computers, atomic clocks, satellites, airplanes and any other piece of technology build according to our understanding of said theories actually do work as they're supposed to work.

I understand what science is too. I just find his faith in scientists to folow its ideology funny. I got a good little chuckle out of his answer.

That should have come up during the Big Bang thread; I needed a good laugh then too.

YES!

Just what I wanted for Christmas, an nice warm, A.cc science vs religion flame war!!!

Haven't had one of these in a while... Ahhh, isn't that nice and toasty?

I never said all scientists were perfect. Probably a lot of them suck. But the ones that suck probably don't produce very good scientific results if at all.

All I was saying is science is a simple loop. Find something new, and if you can't explain then think really hard until you can explain it. There is no "faith" in science because its just a process. Ok I suppose you can have faith that the process will work but it seems to have worked out pretty well so far..

Of course, my last post was sarcastic. But stuff like the big bang theory does make me wonder...

Well, what would you expect? We're only human. In practice it's sometimes difficult for a new idea to catch on. Plate tectonics being a prime example.

You'd hope, but unfortunately I don't think that follows logically.

In what way?
The universe is observed to expand today. If what's true here and now is true there and then it was expanding in the past as well, which means everything was closer together in the past. Extend this line of reasoning backward and everything comes together in one point.
Unfortunately, when approaching that point, you need to combine general relativity (gravity and structure of space-time) with particle physics (quantum field theory) - two theories that are fundamentally incompatible. Our understanding is incomplete. People search for a way to join the two theories in one new theory (eg, string theory) but it's proved to be difficult. These attempts generate new predictions, however, that can be tested and help to guide theory.

Clearly its a sign of impending doom. The only way to survive is by appeasing the gods with a donation to allegro.

Scientific method is like democracy. Both are beautiful ideals, and both are flawed and rather far from the ideal when implemented in real life.

However, just like democracy is the best form of government we found as of yet, science is the best thing we have when striving to uncover natural laws and facts - even if it is flawed because of the people involved, someone has yet to invent anything that works better.

To paraphrase a century old quote by Churchill: "Science is the worst way of uncovering facts, except for all those other ways that have been tried."

EDIT: Damn, didn't notice it was a crazyChris thread. Time to don my asbestos longjohns .

If God said, "You house is pink." Then it is pink,
if I look. I would see a pink house. God will
not lie, If my house is not pink, he will say so.

Correcto!

No, when I see something like that, I ask God.
What does this mean? Am I reading it right? I do
not understand God? God will tell me, and when I
see what it really says, I know it does not
contradict God's word. Cause I now have the
truth. I do not assume that the way I understand
it the first time, that is what fact is.

Do not be deceived by your own conceits.

I know what some of you would do, "Lucky, things
got lucky way back then."

Unless we accept the kingdom of God like a small
child. We will not enter in it.

To be wise is to know how little you do know.
If you are decieved by how much wisdom you have,
you are in error.

The Bible does not attempt to explain how life
started.

There is no system that is full proof. Some of
those animals will attack you on sight.

God will use the foolish things to confound the
wise, and proud.
Children are very smart.

This is what your flame wars are about.

..
..
And I thank God, I thank Jesus.

Like cutting the puzzle pieces to make them fit.

More pieces need to be cut to fit. And new pieces need to be added to make
fill them all in.

The forefathers of America are christians.
America's earliest and best Presidents are
christians.

God loves me, he also loves you.
God Bless you this christmas day.
God's grace, God's promise, God's word, Jesus Christ Lord forever.

And if god showed you three fingers and said there were four, would you see four?

Except that you don't know what the pieces are supposed to look like to begin with!

Which has... what to do with democracy?

Reading this perked my interest because I just finished taking an introductory physics course which covered a lot of this stuff (not very deeply).

Anyways, it was my understanding that the Big Bang theory predicts that the universe expanded out from a single point. The course didn't really get into any math, but our professor (John Hagelin, not sure if he's widely know or anything... he contributed to the Grand Unification theory or something like that) was very good at explaining just the concepts. Basically, he said that space was like the surface of a balloon. The universe began as a single point and stretched out just like a balloon does when you blow it up. The expansion of space right now is due to dark energy, but I don't know if that's what caused it to expand right after the big bang...

Anyway, he said that space expanded so quickly and become so large that all matter in space became diluted (this was introduced by inflationary cosmology). All the matter in the universe today was created when space reheated itself. I asked him why exactly space reheated itself and how this matter emerged, but he said it would be hard to get into it without getting into the complex stuff.

Before taking this course I really had no idea what the big bang theory was, so I thought it seemed pretty silly. But now I see that it's all based on very rigorous mathematical models that took many years to develop. It's not like they just said "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if all the matter in the universe exploded out from a point?" and that was it.

In response to some people posting long peices of irrelavent text:

http://home.comcast.net/~kngjon/truename/truename.html

The founders of <insert Arabic country here> were Muslims.
<insert Arabic country here>'s earliest and best rulers were Muslim.
Clearly Islam is the ultimate religion

Hell yeah, Merry Christmas a.cc!

Now I feel bad. I won't troll Crazy Chris's threads anymore.

God is not going to lie, so he is not going to say there is four, when there is three.

So is that why you cut it? Because you do not know what it looks like. You can only put the correct pieces in the correct places.
The picture will look distorted. And since the pieces are cut, they will not go into their places. So now your confused, and think things that are not, are. And things that are, are not.

Democracy was founded under Christian leaders, "God Bless America".
"God Help Us".
They wanted Freedom from Tyranny, but still have a good country. Freedom of religion, they did not want no one coming over them saying, serve my man made God, and not God.
America has always gone strong. "In God We Trust".

I believe it is the Muslim religious that kills you, if you are not Muslim.
If you do not Deny Christ to them, they will kill you for it.
They rape woman and say it is the womans fault. etc...

Did you hear about the woman who took her husband to court. She was suing him to
only beat her up on the weekend. The court was so amused about it, they gave it to her.

Yes God Bless you all this Christmas evening.

Jesus is my Shield, my grate and mighty tower.
God upholds me with his righteous right hand.
God and Jesus Will never forsake me, or leave me.
Jesus will in no way whatsoever put me out.
Even though I make the mistakes I do.
God still loves me, and so does Jesus Christ, My Lord forever.

I nominate this statement for The Stupidest statement of the year 2007.

This is just... Idiotic and childish to say the least... Christians rape women too. Heck, here, we had some cases were priests raped women. You are throwing all Muslims in one big basket... Whatever respect I had for you, it was just destroyed now.

I am reminded of the sad, sad story of a certain man named Kurt Wise, as recounted by Richard Dawkins, here again recounted more or less using my own words (aside from the quotes, of course).

Kurt Wise was a geologist, you see. Talented, and even went to Harvard to study paleontology under Stephen Jay Gould. But the problem was that he was religious, and he could tell that eventually his faith and science would collide--for one thing, geology would include having to accept that the Earth is older than 10,000 years. One night, he sat down with his copy of the bible and a pair of scissors, and went through it cutting out any section that would have to go if the scientific worldview was true. After that little exercise, this is what he said:

Later, he said:

I hope I'm not alone in finding this immensely sad, pathetic, and ultimately disgusting. Now imagine that if religion could do this to an intelligent, Harvard-educated man, what could it do to someone not so gifted or talented?

Well, at least he was honest.

Since the thread is already derailed...

We have plenty examples in these forums.

I read somewhere that rational decisions are rare. Raw emotions govern our behaviour and the brain can only justify "logically" what we already feel like doing (or believing). Now, fear of death is one of the most powerful drives in our minds. Religion is the completely unfounded belief on an invisible father that will be there for you when you die, and it can ease those childish fears. Science is a different thing altogether, based on pure rational thought and proved facts that have little to do with the afterlife. I think that when you confront the two of them, the raw emotion will win most of the times... Yes, it's sad, pathetic and disgusting.

I see. So you would see four when he tells you there are four, because if he says it's four, hey, it's four.
Ok.

Yeah, so you toss out your old theory and come up with a new one. It's called refining your model.

The ancient Greeks were Christians? Believe it or not, democracy has little or nothing to do with christian values.

I'm not sure... it's up against some pretty stiff competition.

No, but I've stopped getting upset over things like this. Once you start doing that you never stop.

Chris, lets talk, how much do they pay you for doing that fucking job ?

You look like a priest in the ole age of empire. Stop being so mad man, you look crazy

I understand that it's easy to feel dejected, and even to give up and just surrender. I still have the fight in me though, and you and I both know that it's a good fight even if it's a difficult one.

I think in this holiday season we should all be nice to each other's faiths. As a Pastafarian, I strongly believe that science is just put here to test our faith. The Flying Spaghetti Monster wants to know who truly believes, so he plants false evidence for evolution, an old earth, etc.

(Go to http://www.venganza.org if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

Pic:
{"name":"noodledoodle1024_768.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/3\/8\/38f36fdfcbfc2980c00e99e9316480d1.jpg","w":1024,"h":768,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/3\/8\/38f36fdfcbfc2980c00e99e9316480d1"}

EDIT: Looks like I killed the thread.

So you throw out some of the cut pieces, and go and get new pieces from another puzzle. or worse, you just make you own.

Democracy has a lot to do with 'christian values'.

Sorry, no one is paying me anything, no job you see?
crazy? mad? I am not upset, I am blessed that you guys come at me with sticks and stones. Only because my Lord is God. Because Jesus Christ knows my name.

X-G, wow, it has been a long time sense I have seen you.

You do not know how true your words are.

I was busy re writing a program. Sorry I did not get back for your persecution yesterday.

God Bless you if you truly believe in God, and God's word.
Jesus Loves you and me.

Ok, so how do you do problem solving? Ask god what the answer is?

Oh really. What?
As far as I can tell the two are completely unrelated.

If anything, Christianity resembles a dictatorship more than a democracy.

Jesus was a communist. Or maybe a socialist. But he definitely wasn't a capitalistic "democrat."

And the early church followed his example.

You told it yourself: that is your god, not mine. Stop boring me ! I feel alone, but I ensure you that that is really boring. Be neutral, specific, technic, joke, troll, but stop put god everywhere !

Whoah, what did I do? I'm all for everyone's beliefs being respected.

May the Flying Spaghetti Monster bless you. Remember that we are all His creatures. The faithful amongst us will enter Heaven, where He has a stripper factory and a beer volcano waiting.
http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/594065

How could I have been so blinded! I now know the truth! He has finally enlightened me! Everything so clear now! So logical!

May the Flying Spaghetti Monster bless you all! He has created us, and me! I now believe in Him! I was a fool before, but now, I am His meatball!

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is the only god with any balls.

Have YOU been touched by his noodly appendage?

I had a dream in which He let me taste the Beer from the Beer Volcano and lick on His juicy meatball! I woke up... Changed forever by Him! I will never forget the taste and sight of His Heaven! That is the place I will go to if I will follow His commands!

Not that anyone who is reading this cares at this point...

it should be noted that while they did form communist/socialist communities, it was in the greater setting of a captalisitc environment. They still had to go to the markets and buy food with their money that they could distribute amongst themselves as they had need, etc. Some religious communities like this still exist today.

That doesn't really mean anything, I'm not arguing a point. Just trying to add some context that might otherwise be easily glossed over.

Still, Capitalism !== Democracy. And its not the point, even if they had Democracy when Jesus was alive, it still existed long before he was born so Christians have nothing to do with Democracy.

But heck, if you would be enlightened, you would know that the Flying Spaghetti Monster invented Democracy!

I never said Capitalism had anything to do with Democracy.

o rly?

No, not "rly" but really!

EDIT: I edited the post... So it was aimed at you!

Well, they collide if one thinks religion is science and science is religion. As a Christian I think it is very sad how many believers think that way.

Just thought I'd pipe in and wallow in the stupidity that is fundamentalist Christians.

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

Pay close attention to the history part.

America's forefathers were not Christians. Most were atheist or agnostic( Jefferson being a prime example). Freedom of religion does not mean freedom to worship ONLY Christianity( which is what you posted), it means freedom to worship anything within safe limits.

Christianity is not a religion of love and peace, it is a religion of murder and suffering. The faults you find in Islam are paralleled in Christianity: God ordering the jews to kill every man, woman and child to reclaim Judea, opening the earth and swallowing all the non-believers in the Jewish camp, accepting rape so long as the man marries her afterwards, etc etc.

Before you open your disgusting mouth and spout your non-sensical religous bullshit, do some research on what you believe and see you cannot prove anything you say but much of what we say.

NOMA is a fraudulent cop-out. tl;dr version: Religion makes a lot of cosmological, scientific claims, such as "An omnipotent creator-deity created the world and influences our lives", "The earth is 10,000 years old", "A man was born of a virgin mother", "This same man raised the dead and healed the sick", "Miracles occur", "Prayer works", etc. These are all claims that conflict with science, and without them, you don't have much of a religion left.

No, you don't, if those claims are the kind of stuff you're looking for. Those claims were written before science as we know it was defined. Or at the same time science was taking its first steps. It's not because God created the world in six days that my faith is what it is. It's not because Jesus was born of virgin Mary I'm a Christian. If it were, my faith would collapse. It has collapsed for many people. And it has never been there for many people. For that very same reason. I do believe in scientific facts, but putting my faith in it is another thing. I don't believe the scientific facts are there for me. Their purpose is not to make me a human with a meaning. They just are there. The scientific, materialistic viewpoint of world has very little to do with a religious view. Plato and Aristotle argued about ideas and matter, kind of. It's vaguely related to the discussion about religion and science.

Anyway, we all know no one will change his point of view on these things here on a.cc, but maybe someone will understand another better.

But without the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the virgin birth of Jesus, Jesus cannot have been the physical incarnation of God (remember, a divine Jesus must be free of sin, and without either of the above events, he would've been stained with Original Sin). Without a sacred Jesus, all his teachings are moot, and his post-crucifixion resurrection cannot have taken place. (Actually, there are lots of reasons why it couldn't have taken place, many of which are scientific.) And all of these things are central tenets of the Christian faith. The resurrection in particular is the lynchpin on which the entire postulation that God walked the earth hinges (no death-and-resurrection, no absolution of man's sins, and no divine Jesus), and it most definitely conflicts with science.

While we're on the topic, let me just say it outright: Faith is idiotic. I cannot fathom why people can somehow take "I have no reason to think this; in fact I have every reason not to, but I'm doing it anyway" as a point of pride. "Faith" is just "ignorance" in fancy clothes--worse, it's deliberate ignorance (just scroll up and read about Kurt Wise to see just how deliberate it gets)--and we have no business invoking it as an excuse anywhere, anytime, if we want to call ourselves intelligent beings.

If you say so. Personally I know I would be BIG TIME PISSED OFF because of lots of things in my life (how my father died, how I suffer from some diseases that might ruin my life and carreer as a musician etc). Prayer helps me.

I think it's possible to believe in the teachings of Jesus (he was a reasonably enlightened man, I think) without actually believing things like virgin birth or the resurrection to have happened literally (meaning they happened metaphorically). If that helps someone feel better about themselves and the world it's a good thing.
Maintaining holy scripture is the litteral truth in the face of evidence to the conterary, however, is deeply disturbing.

Which is how things like Atheists For Jesus get started. Taking to heart the entirely philosophical teachings is fine, but that's not really religion anymore than existentialism or deontology or consequentialism are religions, is it? The position of supernatural (and thus practically by definition science-defying) elements is what makes something a religion, as opposed to just a school of thought (and is also the reason why several strains of Buddhism are not always considered religions).

If you do not believe in the immaculate conception, virgin birth, or the resurrection, then you can't reasonably believe in a divine Jesus or the absolution of sin, and that's not Christianity as we know it. Those events have to have happened literally, or the fundamental aspect of Christianity, which is that God sent himself/his-only-son to absolve mankind's sin through his death, goes entirely out of the window. I'd go as far as call anyone who claims to be Christian and not believe that Jesus was God incarnate smugly dishonest at best and a liar at worst.

It was a ...MIRACLE!!!

You see, God has a lot of free time, so once upon a time he does little stunts like sending gators to people and then retrieving them.

Just for fun.

For what it's worth, do you realize that Catholics are the only mainstream denomination that teach the Immaculate Conception (at least from what I'm familiar with in the USA)? Protestants adamantly consider it heresy, teaching that Mary was a regular, sinful person. But almost every denomination teaches the virgin birth, as it's pretty hard not to if you consider the Bible to be basically without error.

But I don't really see why either is fundamental to the belief that Jesus was sinless. Surely Mary miraculously giving a virgin birth isn't the only method God has at his disposal for making sure Jesus started out sinless.

Now this I agree with, in respect to maintaining any sort of meaning to the word "Christian." It implies some sort of belief in God the supernatural and by extension of that, the belief in that Jesus was who he said he was.

If you only look at Jesus as a good man with good teachings, then I don't see how you can consider yourself part of any spiritual Christian church. I think then you just belong to a Jesus Club, and that's all well and good if it helps you be a better person.

But really we are just arguing semantics at this point. I think it is possible to throw out all of the supernatural and still agree with Jesus' teaching on how to live your life. I wouldn't call that being a "Christian," but if someone wants to use that label in that way, I don't care.

What? You speak of Judaism not Christianity.

I think you're the one who needs to do some research before you open your disgusting mouth and spout your nonsensical anti-religion bullshit.

Actually it was funny, I was qanking with my friends to home tis night.And then a co pt runes over and asks as for our "information". So. W w had to tell ghim our names and dirth dates... Sucks, This was the first tim e if was written dowmn into the datbase od gthe ciops. ...

Nut I prwtty much agree on the matter with X-G. Corruption.,.. Yeah.. kinda

Think about those two things for a second. If someone thinks Jesus lied about who he said he was, then how could he have good teachings?

What makes Christianity great is: it frees you from your past.

Posting under the influence again....

I'll give you two answers:

1. A person can give good advice even if, in the worst case, he is a fraud. Perhaps a person would lie about things to further his cause. The message is the same regardless of the person giving it.

2. Perhaps Jesus didn't literally consider himself God. If you are looking at the Bible as a fallible source of wisdom, you have great liberty in choosing what you want to believe.

1. I, for one, would not take advice from someone I believed to be a fraud. YMMV.

2. Regardless of what people believe or don't believe, it's what the jews killed him for.

yes i do. I ask him for all things. I ask him for everything to say to you guys on this forum.

Jesus is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. God is in control, and always will be in control. He is also the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Matthew 6:19-20

They collide because people use science to say God is not real.

no sorry, that is not what I posted. what I posted was that they did not want a tyrant over them, forcing them to worship there fake gods.

I am sorry there are so many hypocrites in the world in the past, and today. If you are truly a believer in Christ Jesus, and you love God. Then you also love your enemies and your brothers. If you hate your brother, and say you love God, you are a lier. You can not hate your brother, and love God. If you love God, you keep all of his commandments. And his commandment is to do what is right.

why was it that god ordered that? Because of the wicked and evil. God also sent wicked and evil people, to destroy Israel, and take it over.

God chastises a man, like a man chastises his son. God brings on Godly sorry for repentance. God came to the people that Israel attacked and destroyed. He called them to repent from wicked and evil. They would not stop doing evil. Then Israel came in and destroyed them by the hand of God.
When Israels generation did evil. God did the same thing to them also. There is lots of text in the old testament of God punishing Israel for their sins. Also his mercy on the just and right.

God does not judge a man by his looks 'non-believers'. He looks at your heart, he knows the evil from the good.
He knows you better than you know yourself.

Try to prove God's word wrong.

like it says here

Why you think he did "Miracles"? So when a person sees a Miracle, he will believe. That is one reason Jesus did many Miracles. So that by the Miracles people would believe on him.

God will make the foolish, confound the wise.

the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

God's prophets prophesied of Jesus many many years before Jesus was born. Jesus birth place was a sign from God. When Jesus died on the cross, it was a sign from God. Jesus being born of a virgin was a sign from God, the Star was a sing from God, Jesus rising from the dead was a sing from God. John the baptists was a sign from God. There will be many signs in the end times. If you had lived in that time, and read the scriptures that talked about Jesus before he was born. You would have seen the signs that God talked about.

When the king killed all the children in his land so he could hit Jesus, that also was a sign. It was written long before it happened.

The signs are still around today. People do work miracles like Jesus did today.

Then you are calling God a lier, and if you are not for God, he is against you.

that is because you are ignorant of God.

God does like to laugh, and play to.

I think what you guys are talking about is misunderstood. Jesus is God's Son. Jesus was before the world was. I do not believe being born of a virgin woman is about being sinless.

When Jesus died on the cross, his heel was bruised. When he rose from the dead, Satan's head was bruised.
Like the giant Goliath of the philistines.

Jesus was already in existence before he was conceived in Mary.

"Christian" == "Child of God."

it is called anti-christ. I think He would have been just happy if a Satanist come here and spread his beliefs to him.

And secures your future.

That is a good reason for him to do many miracles. It is the signs that follow true believers. True people of God.

John 10:15
"15As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep."

This is why they killed him.

luke 23:14-15

15No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him.
</quote>

Except for some horrible grammar, and the following quote, I'm surprised, I actually agree with you. You seemed like a pretty naive person up until now.

Science does not say that God is not real, science can not prove or disprove God's existence.

Not that the following experiment proves God is real or not real, it does leave something to the imagination, sorry I don't have the original document/sources, but I did read it in a secular book in highschool that had nothing to do with Christianity.

The experiment was this: There were a bunch of sick people in the hospital with illnesses ranging from the mundane to the life threatening. A controlled experiment took place where groups of people were assigned to pray for certain individuals to get better, but only certain ones. The experiment was controlled to the point where not only did the patients not know if they were being prayed for or not, but the doctors and hospital staff didn't know either. Generally speaking, the people who were prayed for healed faster, and healed nicer than their counter parts. -- It should also be noted that there was no one religion shared amongst the people praying, it was a general free for all as far as religion goes.

Now this could be chalked up to statistical anomaly, or even statistical interpretation, as I have very clearly shown no sources -- the book I read is also long gone, no idea what it was even called. So you should take all this with a grain of salt.

So, you don't actually solve your own problems, you hope your god solves them for you?

So you agree that it is a dictatorship (ie, NOT a democracy) then? That was the thing you replied to.
But I forget, you enjoy giving circumloquatious answers.

You do know that that's humanly impossible, right?

Not at all. Jesus may very well have believed that he was the son of god, even if he wasn't. It is not a lie to say what you think to be true, even if it's false.

Er... no, that's not what it means. It maybe what you think it implies, but it's not what the word means.

You know what I think Jesus said to people? The god of the Old Testament is a pretty fiendish, capricious and frightening creature, as likely to hit you hard and to raise you high. It's impossible to follow all of his commandments to the letter and not to do so is to incur his unending wrath. It's very depressing. I think Jesus said to the people: "you shouldn't be so frightened of god. You need to form your own personal relationship with god, and he will love you like a father. He may be angry with you at times but he will always forgive you, because he loves you. He's like a father to me and he'll be like a father to you if you do as I say."
Then people took those words and twisted them around and changed Jesus' message into something he himself hadn't intended. That's what I think happened.

In defence of the few horrible laws in the bible (old testament ), most were made because "We can't stop people from doing X, so at least lets curb it down", a couple of examples are:
1) It was impossible to get soldiers to give up the women of the conquered, they fought hard and they wanted some feminine rewards for their work. That is why to enjoy them they had to:
a) Marry them.
b) Wait a couple of months.*

• - during which it was expected of the women to mourn her dead husband and family, and thus be in a permanent state of crying/wailing and generally being unappealing, to dissuade the future husband from wanting her.

(Also, it was to make sure she got her period, so you could tell she wasn't pregnant and be sure that any child she bears belongs to her new husband.)
2) Slavery was also impossible to abolish in those times, so they merely restricted it. For example, Jewish slaves would be released every seventh year, and there were restrictions in allowing one to become a permanent slave.

Not that I preach for Judaism or any other religion, I just can't help myself since the subject has been brought up and I have knowledge about it.

Again? You make it sound like its regular...

You know... That is kinda freaky! I hope you are doing that while alone, because otherwise you are really risking a stay in the local mental hospital.

Thats what Stalin and Hitler thought... And look at them now, both are dead.

BTW: Are you confirming him to be like a dictator? How can Christianity then have anything to do with Democracy? Please, give clear answers... Not quotes.

They collide because people use religion to say God is real!

They are false Gods only in your eyes... Did you ever think of that? Other people see other gods just like you see Jesus.

OK, An example. If your brother ( I don't know if you have a brother, just for example ) killed your family and your dog for <put good reason here>... Would you love him? Would you love the guy that raped your mother? I doubt it. Hate and anger are natural. You cannot avoid them as a human being... THERE ARE NO PEOPLE LIKE NED FLANDERS!

So, if you are good and don't believe in good you still come in Heaven? Sounds logical, only you said a couple of times its not possible.

Try to prove God's word right.

How do you know he did miracles? I believe he didn't. The church added that later for more crispyness to his character. He was a normal guy with a vision... Thats all. Oh, he was also a guy that got crossed and his grave robbed for unknown reasons thus creating an illusion of him raising up from the dead!

How do you know that Jesus didn't use theses prophecy's into his advantage? Anyway did you know there were more "messiahs" then just Jesus at the time? It was a real battle of who gets more followers. And about the scriptures, yeah, like this: "A man will come, he will do miracles"? If its in stunning details, with name, when exactly he was born and where, what he will do, how will he die etc etc then I will believe. But its not.

But god loves all people?

Ahh my brain just frooze.. And this post is getting big. I'm gonna stop now. It is for the best.

You missed the point. The point is that they left to flee religious persecution, so that they could believe whatever they wanted to -- obviously they thought that whatever gods they were being forced to believe in were false -- either that or they believed that they way that were being forced to believe in a god was the wrong way -- Depending on where they fled from and what they believed. (I'm no history buff, but this is my understanding.)

I don't know because it's never happend to me. But I do know that everyone has an emotional breaking point, when that clicks, you can start thinking and doing all sorts of wierd stuff that's not consistent with your character. Jesus's own apostles who said they'd die with him if they had to, instead forsake him, just as prophecy foretold.

There are hundreds more where those came from, ones he had no control over -- for example, for a sacrifice to be pleasing to God as defined in the old testament, it must have no broken bones -- The two men who were crucified next to Jesus had their legs broken so that they would die faster; The roman soldiers wanted to break Jesus's legs also, but they checked to see if he was dead first, and he was, and so they didn't. They also gambled for his clothes, normally they would have just split the cloth up, but he had a really nice tunic of some kind (probably made as a bar mitzvah present by his mother) that they didn't want to tear up, so they gambled for it.

Vanneto: It seems like you're just arguing for the sake of arguging. I could write up counter points for everything you've said and more... but it won't change anything, and I really don't want to. I think I'll just go to sleep. Have a good night a.cc.

Isn't everyone doing the same? There really isn't no point in such debates, no one is going to change anyone. Its just for the sake of arguing.

I lied though, I edited my post above a bit. Now I'm going to sleep.

Yeah, I guess; I almost couldn't think of anything more pointless, but a few ideas do come to mind, sleep is not one of them.

Don't know what you meant here, but anyway, have a good night sleep!

Care to cite a source? In my highschool, not citing a source is plagarism.

I'm sorry if this comes out rude, but you are wrong. Unlike you, I am familiar with the experiment in question. It empirically demonstrated that prayer has no significant effect on the recovery of patients. You can't object to the results as being the result of a bias of the researchers, either; even if it wasn't a double blind test as they say it was, the study was done by the Templeton Foundation, a right-wing academic group. Needless to say, they don't flaunt the results of the experiment very much.

Sources:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/40765.php
http://blog.atheology.com/2006/03/31/templeton-prayer-study-flawed/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templeton_Foundation
http://www.templeton.org/
Richard Dawkins, "The God Delusion"

EDIT: Now, if they had prayed to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the outcome of the experiment might have been different.

Like I said, I don't remember the name of the book, it was secular though, and it said the results were opposite of what you say. Maybe the experiment was done more than once by more than one group? Anyway, I guess the point is moot as it's not science if it's not repeatable.

The one I'm talking about wasn't done by christians...

Some of them might have, as like I said before, it wasn't a christian experiment, the religions involved were not restricted in any way.

And he does solve them.

Yes it is, God has all of the power. His Son is the King of King's, and Lord of Lord's.

What is God's commandment again? To love.
You know why God gave man sacrifices of flesh? To rid you of your sins.
Jesus Christ was a sin offering that washed away all sin, and all guilt.
When you make a mistake and you are under God's Grace. Then sin dept has been forgiven already.

Since you do not believe in the one God sent, you are calling God a lier. Calling God's massager a lier, is calling the one who sent him a lier.

Try to find that word in the Bible. 'christain'
What you will find instead is "Child of God".
Also a note, the definition in the Bible is mistaken. Obviously The writer did not know God. Jesus did not introduce a religion. Jesus did not invent a religion.
Jesus teethings are the same in the old testament of the bible.

God knows all of our faults and failures. God will never put nothing on us that is to hard to handle. God stays faithful to his word. Getting out of a temptation is not impossible. There is always a way out, God stays faithful to that.

Did you know that King David killed a man for the mans wife? God had a short talk with him about it. When King David asked God for forgiveness, God forgave him for it.

God is slow to anger, and quick to mercy.

Democracy? anyways that was not the topic. The topic was America. America is a Democracy found by Christian leaders. The topic was not, Democracy was made by Christians, it was America was found by Christians.

Really, does a piece of wood breath? Can metal see, or hear?

Yes I would forgive him. I would be very angry with him, But I would forgive him for it. Love never dies. Ned Flanders is sarcasm!

You do not understand. When you have sinned, any sin at all. You have sin dept to pay for it. It must be paid for with blood. The payment for sin is death. Jesus Christ was killed on the cross, so that the people who believe on him. Can have the sin and guilt washed away by the blood of Jesus.

If you can not prove what God says wrong, then it still stands as the truth.

The Miracles follow those that are believers in Christ. If you are such a professional at unbelief, if you saw a miracle, you would not believe it. So you would not see it. Even though you witnessed it.

No you are mistaken, there was only one other man besides Jesus at that time. That was John the baptist. His followers left John, to follow Jesus. And there was also many Anti-Christs in that time, as there is today. And there was also the Pharasiess, and scribes. Jesus had many fights with them.

He does, he takes no pleasure in a mans death. God is our Judge, has your dept been paid today? you can not come out of prison until you have served the full measure of your judgment.
now, if the punishment for sin is death...

I have been molested, beaten, and robbed many times. I have forgiven it all.

Those that are merciful will have mercy. But those that are unforgiving will be not be forgiven.
God will Judge you according to your works.

These arguments go further than either one of us know.

Thinking back to miracles. They had a show on Discover not to long ago, they were showing Miracles done by believers. I think they did a study all around the world.

The burden of proof lies with the person making the positive assertion. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to substantiate them.

To illustrate this point, the philosopher Bertrand Russell made an analogy with the claim that a celestial china teapot orbits the sun between Mars and Earth. This teapot can not been proven or disproven to exist; however, it would not be reasonable to presume it's existence because it has not been disproven.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot for more information on this famous teapot.

May I be the first one to post this site and show that your "god" is not a god of love and mercy:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible3.htm

Edit: Posted the wrong link

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that a site called www.religioustolerance.org points out flaws in religious scripture?

May I be the first one to call you an athiest jackass?

[edit]
Oooh, the post I was retorting to was edited out. Swell.

You were the one the equated democracy with Christian values.
Furthermore, someone else already said that America was founded by atheists (I wouldn't know, not being an American and not caring much about someone else's forefathers.)

Unless you also agree that if you can not prove what I say is wrong, then what I say still stands as the truth, that's what you call a double standard.

Come on! How could I not quote that?

If I am a jackass for being direct and standing firm to my belief that the god of organized Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is evil, then so be it. At least I am using logic and not idiocy as others might. At the very least, I have sources that show how infallible and malevolent God really is.

And in case you didn't notice, I do believe in God. Just not in the benevolent one that everyone else seems to think God is. I do not let blind, ignorant faith cloud my vision of history and what the Bible says.

So when are we going to see "Holy War, The Game" in the depot?

Here's a book I read. It's about the God of Judaism, Christianity and maybe Islam, too.

I recommend it for everyone who gets agitated by a thread like this, no matter what you believe in. It does picture an evil god, mainly based on the Old Testament. But I guess everyone can read the old testament and come to the same conclusion. I only wish the author would write a sequel about how this Jesus changed everything. Not to mention the events in the 4th century. The author's Christian viewpoint doesn't affect the book very much. And when it does, it's still written in a non-preaching style. He doesn't avoid writing about contradictions in the Bible, he even writes some "heretic" things about God actually being an assimilation of many gods.

After reading that book all of you would probably remain unaltered, what comes to personal belief, but judging from the popularity of threads like this, I guess you would find the book very interesting.

[edit]
Seems like it hasn't been translated to English, yet

Ok, so I take it you wish to retract your earlier claim that democracy is a christian thing?
Oh, but I forget, everything you say is god's word because you ask him what to write before writing it.

There's several, but the word "love" does not appear to be among them in the ten commandments as listed in Exodus in my copy.

If you're saying I don't believe in your god, no, I don't. That's orthogonal to what I said though, which is that ignorance does not make one a liar.

Of course it's not in there. The term wasn't invented until later.

And on that assertion you say that "christian" means "child of god"? For your information, Jesus Christ does not translate to "Jesus, son of god". It translates to Jesus the Anointed, which is what the Jews did to kings and priests at the time.

That's crap and you know it, or should. There is a very clear difference between the old testament and the new testament. Ever heard of the reformation? To this day the Protestant and Catholic Churches differ in their opinion on how to unify the two.

Only if you already believe in it to begin with.

Johan: does sound interesting. Not going to learn Swedish for ith though.

Like I said, he will punish a man, like a man will punish his child.
He will come to you, and say turn from this wicked and evil. Turn and I will not hurt you. Do not turn, and you will be hurt.

God will spank your butt if you will not behave yourself.

You are only look at the bad things, and not the good things. You are also not seeing why God spanked them. Some of those guys rapped and killed men and woman.

Look at Sodom and Gomorrah. God rained hell fire from heaven on it, not because God wanted to kill a city. But because they rapped men and woman until they died. Two of Gods angels went into one of those cities to see what the sexual outcry was. They wanted to rape the two angels all night long. It is written in there.

God Bless you, Jesus Christ will save if you will call on him and believe.

There are people that God is with all over this world. Just cause you have not seen the United States of America before, does not mean I have not. Are the other billions who have.
I have not seen Canada before, but I do know and believe it is there.

...Edit...

Democracy is not a Christian thing. The people that used it to Make the USA. They were Christians.

God's commandment is love, everything God says to not do, are things of hate. Sleeping with someone else's wife, stealing cattle, killing your brother. Those are things of hate. God said do not do it. But do not go near someone else's wife. Return cattle when you find it lose. Avoid your angry brother.

Jesus means the Christ, the Holy one of God. God sent. Anointed, that is for sure.

Sure you are not a lier because you do not know it is a lie that you spread. But you are telling lies by spreading it. The source of the lie is the lier. Like Satan, the Father of All lies.

Thanks to God, I have Jesus Christ who never tells a lie.
The spirit of truth. God will not disappointed his Children. He always provides, and delivers.

Good, glad that's cleared up then!

First of all the USA is barely a democracy, second... learn to read?

You have a funny definition of "love" and "hate". It's probably not worth anyone's time to go into this further though.

Poor spelling aside, can't you at least try to learn to spell correctly if the word is spelled properly in the bit of text you quote?

I've said it before and I'll say it again. A false statement is not a lie, a lie is a false statement delivered as truth in full knowledge of it being false.

It just seems like you are taking some stuff out of context (or rather, the sources you cited).

Thanks for an answer that has exactly nothing to do with what I have said.

Don't get mad at each other, blame Canada.

Which is what I said.

It is because you do not understand me.

Yeah lets get a scape goat for what we did.
That is what Jesus is, a scape goat for our sins.
God put his wrath on Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ the only man who stayed faithful to God.

But anyways, I am leaving you guys. I am shaking off every radiation, word, and my account from allegro.cc. And I will do my best to get rid of the cache to.

bye bye.

Good riddance!

All I have to say is text that will be automagically turned into "I'm dumb!".

Happy New Year ?

130 posts, one in A.cc comments, 129 in Off-topic ordeals.
Fascinating. I suppose the holiday season is coming to an end.

Mouhouhahahahaha

Finally! It was fun for a while, but it became boring very quickly.

People that state that they're going to leave don't actually leave, do they?

No, but they become lurkers.

If your only defense of the truth of the Bible is quotes from the Bible, then you don't have a case.

But than the atheists wont be allowed make arguments that are quotes from other atheists? Thats just not fair.

Nonparallel situations. The bible isn't arguing for its own truth, which is perfectly legitimate; it is simply making the statement. Here's a clarification: You shouldn't argue for the validity of a source using only statements from that source that the source is true.

I find it funny that you guys are so bothered by it. If you really "knew" God didn't exist and it was all nonsense, you would just ignore this. But the fact that you argue for 5 pages shows that it bothers you.

I'm dumb!

It bothers us when people start spouting religion as scientific fact. If the persons who do so were a fringe, then indeed it wouldn't be a problem. However, there are significantly powerful people who are trying to drag this into not only science, but policy. <insert rest of boilerplate rant here>

It bothers me when people start spouting scientific theory as fact. You don't see me flipping out here.

If you truly did not believe in God, you would just ignore it. The fact that you can't ignore it and are bothered by it proves something.

Everyone's different. What you may be able to tolerate, and thus ignore, may be something that sets someone else off.

The fact that you can leave alone what some others cannot doesn't prove a thing.

Define "flipping out".

The reason we( non-fanatic Americans) fight so hard against it is because it is destroying our country. Christian fanatics are trying to forcibly convert everyone and ram their beliefs down our throats. It starts with low level government, moves onto high level and starts creating laws that MOST do not agree with.

Spank spank spank.

Forcibly? I've never seen a Christian take somebody by force and require them to adopt Christianity to avoid bodily harm. I have seen other religions do stuff like crash planes into buildings or what not to prove a point. Go figure.

And what laws are being created that most do not agree with that have anything to do with religion?

You don't get it, do you?
Anyway, you think one has to believe in "god" in order to discuss the merits and demerits of religion?

Who's bothered? As far as I'm concerned anyone can believe in any old nonsense they want, even if it's the Easter Bunny. What does bother me is faulty logic, incoherent reasoning, replying to questions with vague statements that are only tangentially related to the question and claiming all of it is devine inspiration.

There's more types of force than threat of bodily harm. Personally, I think people ringing your doorbell and ask you if they want to be converted, stopping you in the street and asking you if you want to be converted or dragging god into every other forum post constitute forms of harassment.

Societies all over the world are getting more conservative. Religion is back. This is the direct result of uncertainty, which is, in turn, the result of applying capitalism in the wrong way: instead of offering chances to everyone to make a good living, now it's very hard to do so thanks to people that abuse their power and exploit all economic opportunities.

The American dream is dead, long live Jesus Christ. He will save us all.

As Evert said, it can be done without bodily harm. Such as placing items of the Christian faith in public places thus showing that only Christians share certain values or are the reason for justice or some such things.

The first one that comes to mind is our "president" vetoing a certain stem cell bill because of his christian values even though the majority if Americans supported it. Democracy my ass.

Well, I've never seen them either, but I've never seen any of you guys IRL. As for whether violence to convert to Christianity has occurred...

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

Also, why don't you look into Kansas and Boston? Kansas: The school board has actually redefined the word "science" to pander to christians who can't handle the idea that the Bible isn't scientific fact. Now they're teaching "intelligent design", which is creationism repainted to look vaguely acceptable to educators. Boston: This was a while ago, but Pat Robertson said, after they rejected "intelligent design" in school classrooms, that the citizens of Boston had "turned Christ out of the city". Do you see atheists doing that? On a side note, in what culture or society have there ever been atheists doing what religious people have done willy-nilly all over the globe, killing people because they don't conform?

If atheists ever became an overwhelming majority, it could happen.

Having a different religion is just the excuse for killing people, not the reason behind it. If there were no religion or all people had the same religion people would just come up with other excuses to kill eachother. Belonging to different ethnic groups, for instance.

True. However, since people do have different religions, and that is the excuse, the urge to kill has been wrapped around religion so much that they are irrevocably associated. Because religion has been coopted thus, there is always the danger of religious bigotry.

Funny, the only religious people I've ever had come to my door (in the past 3 cities I've lived in) are Jehova's witnesses.

Harassment? Forum posts can contitute harassment now?

If you don't like the items, ignore them. That logic is the same logic that McDonald's cant be advertised because fatasses who blame mcdonalds for the obesity of the country are offended by it or some other baloney.

BAF is right. If they come to your door, you can slam it shut in front of their noses. You have a choice.

<off-off-topic>
But I am annoyed at how much the Catholic Church is gaining power here in Slovenia. We are the only country I know of that gave them land back... It sickens me.

EDIT:

It also sickens the religious folk here that the catholic church is getting so much land and money back - That surprises me.

Yes, advertisement is annoying. The objection to placing items of religious faith in the public square is that some see it as tantamount to forcing whichever religion on passersby. This, of course, violates the First Amendment.

Okay I think I understand now. X-G is right about everything. Since X-G is the source and I am separate that works. And X-G says god doesn't exist which means it doesn't!

Buwahaha, defy my logic now I dare you.

I get bothered for nearly the same reasons as it would appear X-G does:

Part of the problem with Christianity and its relatives is a very loosely defined purpose. The bible is full of stories of all sorts of morality, plenty of which are very scary. It seems to me that Christians of the day pick and choose ideas to be called 'Christian ideals.'

A passionate and pointless cause is one of the most worry, as it is the preachers of the day who can decide for masses on their own whim.

This is very worrying to me for the same reason that Hitler is.

But assuming the next president is not a War monger, that is less of a concern. The second largest concern is just having to coexist with all the stupidity that generally surrounds these people. I already have far too much of it around me to take much more... and come on, we have to get hover-boards before I die.

That doesn't violate the first ammendment. The first ammendment reads:

By placing a religous item in a public area doesn't make a law about it. It doesn't prohibit free exercise of religion.

Well, I have faith, and I have very good reasoning to believe what I believe. If you have no reason to believe what I believe, then don't believe it.

Umm... what are you talking about?

Umm... what are you talking about?
</quote>
This is more Ayn Rand's idea, so she should be getting the credit. She describes two individuals:

1. Mystics of spirit

2. Mystics of muscle

The 1st kind would be a preacher of any sort. This person might or might not believe in what hes doing but works hard to spread the meme (thought virus).

The 2nd kind is a preacher who is conscious of his control over the masses. An example of this might be your preacher selecting a story that might be compassionate to, lets say, a particular candidate for office. The extreme version of this person would be Hitler.

To give you more context Ayn Rand postulates that most newspapers authors usually fall into one of these two categories (IMO most fall into the first category due to stupidity). These people are not spreading normal 'religion' however, but the religion of society itself.

Ayn Rands goes on to say that the 1st kind can sometimes "figure it out" and become the 2nd kind. Most of her books are about "what would happen" if society was overtaken by the 2nd kind (and they're usually pretty awful).

So what kind is she?

Mostly the 2nd kind.

In a general response to the last few posts, Atheists that spout off and push an agenda are annoying too. This isn't something specific to theism.

TL;DR version: Annoying people are annoying. Dur.

Yes... your point being? I mean, they are religious and they do ring your door bell and they do try to convert you. Which is what I said was annoying.

Yes, and I have to interrupt whatever I'm doing and slam the door in their faces. Same with telephone sales. I can just cut off the connection, but I still need to pick up the phone, listen to a few seconds of dribble to make out what the call is about and slam down the phone.

I said I consider posting "god is awesome" at the end of each post a form of harassment. Maybe that's not the word I'm looking for, so just pretend I said "increadibly annoying and offensive".

I mostly agree with Evert.

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/10/atheists-and-an.html

You're welcome.

Oh yes!

That... was beautiful. 590832 AND LONG₁!

_{1 - Which makes it more beautiful.}

Hey, that gal said everything I ever wanted to say about religion in just one blog!

I not only agree 100% with her, but I congratulate her with all my heart.

If people were like her, the world would have much less problems. That's because she is truly honest.

Unfortunately, not all people have reached a level of realization like that. Many people never do.

I hope that future generations will be less religious and more logical. It will only be good for humanity.

That was a good read; I agree with almost everything she said too. I probably wasn't supposed to though.

Great link.

I'm curious...
Would simply putting one's religious views in one's signature, rather than inserting it by hand, be less annoying and offense to you?
If so, why does this distinction matter?
If not, why haven't you taken Vanneto to task yet?

Because usually, you don't read the signature, do you? I don't know 90% of signatures because I don't read them. They are not obvious. Texts in posts are obvious on the other hand. Big difference.

Well, if nobody read them, they wouldn't even be there, so it seems like someone at some point would have to read them. (Hmm, maybe. Someone could make a koan out of this)
Personally, I tend to read fast, so I just kind of skim over everything. I do understand what you're saying, though.

Also, signatures are just there, and inserted after every post. It's a lot less easy to blame someone for something annoying in the signature, but if they type it in every time, that means they are knowingly and thoughtfully putting in the content. If I gave you a random riddle in the post every time I posted, it would get pretty annoying. However, as it is in my sig, you don't even really notice it.

My posts were taking the defense of Christianity, which was being attacked all throughout this series of threads.

Umm.. what the hell is he talking about?

That is HARDLY unique to athiesm.

I won't say anything about the military issues mentioned, because I don't know much about the issues mentioned, and he cites sources that seem biased. Again, with the presidential quote, I don't know any of the surrounding circumstances. Seems irrelevant to the debate at hand anyhow.

What about how it took until 1920 for women to be guaranteed the right to vote? Cry me a river, that is a segregation issue, nothing to do with religion.

A lot of people are angry that the other half of Americans don't belive in creationism. Every religion is angry or upset that non-believers don't believe. Again, irrelevant to the issue at hand.

This is another non-issue. Schools should be teaching creationism as well as darwinism. There is no more reason to believe creationism than there is to believe evolution. Let the students make the choice. By teaching only darwinism you are doing the exact same thing that everyone would have a fit about if only creationism was taught.

And I'm angry that Athiests (or anyone) still haven't managed to find a cure for AIDS.

I'm angry that women are having so much unprotected sex then using abortion as a form of after-the-fact birth control. Abortion has it's place, mistakes and rape. I agree with it in those uses. Those who get abortion after abortion are the uses I don't agree with.

I'm about sick of reading this guys/girls reasons for angry athiests. The reasons, in my opinion, are mostly bullshit. It's mostly fluff, no real content that is relevant to the topic, and not much that is unique to Athiesm.

I agree with a bunch of it, but I also see where it has hardly anything to do with Athiesm itself.

It's quite easy to blame people for annoying sigs. For example, sigs that are too long. If your posts started annoying me, I would start ignoring the annoying parts, or your postings all together. That is an important essential skill on the internet.

I'm not trying to convert or change anyone here, I'm just arguing back, Athiests say religious people make bad arguments, when I see the same shitty argument from both sides. Including most of mine.

In principle, no. In practice, I never even look at people's signatures. Literally.

Oh? How is "I've only ever seen Jehova's ring people's doorbell to try to convert them" defending Christianity against "people ringing your doorbell with the intention of converting you are annoying and offensive"? Actually more to the point, how was what I said "attacking" Christianity?

she

So, in your opinion, ruling out people because of their faith (or lack there of) has "nothing to do with religion"?

They sure as bloody hell should not, and if they want to it's in a religious class or as part of a history class, not a science class.
Don't get me wrong: if science finds that creationism is the proper model then that is what should be tought in science classes, but today's science class should teach today's science (well, probably yesterday's since it takes a while for cutting-edge research to work its way down to the education system). Creationism is not a scientific theory or model and does not belong in a science class.
(edited for clarity)

Students aren't capable of passing any sort of judgement. Do you want to apply the same to physics? Should people be thought that light is a vibration of the aether just in case they like that more than the theory of relativity? Should they be given multiple options in maths class just in case they prefer 1+1=3 instead of 1+1=2?
It's not a matter of opinion. You don't get to choose what works for you, as you would with leftwing versus rightwing politics.

It is on the basis of religion, but isn't any more reason for atheists to be angry with it to this day than it is for women to be angry over their historic lack of voting rights.

So we should do what is right for atheism, and ignore religion? We sure can teach the scientific side of things, but why not teach creationism and other religious views of how we came to be? That appeases all sides. If creationism or anything else is so unscientific or unbelievable then the students will agree. Let them pick what they want to believe.

The difference here is that the things you mention can be proven wrong, but creationism for example cannot readily be proven wrong. Lack of evidence either way != proof it is wrong.

Personally, I have no problem as such with the teaching of creationism, or any other idea-- what bothers me is if something nonscientific is being presented as legitimate science. That's junk science, and that's bad.

The preponderance of scientific evidence available at the present time supports evolution. That doesn't make the theory automatically right, but what that means is that in any course that's going to call itself "science," it should teach what scientists, following scientific methods, have been able to determine, not just any old thing.

It's not really an issue of atheism vs. any other system of beliefs. If atheists (or anyone else) started advocating that humans spontaneously came into existence when gamma rays struck blobs of dinosaur poop, I'd not want this taught as "science" either, given the lack of scientific evidence for it.

(Edited for clarity.)

They call it the "theory of gravity", too. Are you going to start arguing that we don't float away because of the earth's magnetic love for us all? Or just about as reasonable, are you going to argue that we in fact are floating away, we just don't realize it?

It seems you are making a mistake many make by confusing "theory" and "hypothesis". A theory is a scientific explanation for a phenomenon that has until now not been disproved. "Theory" implies significant scientific evidence for the idea.

The concept of faith infuriates me as much as it does you, but I still call myself a Christian because, having grown up around Christians I cannot deny that there is something to it. And perhaps also because I would like it to be true. Or at least, for my interpretation of it to be the correct one.

And that makes her anger any less reasonable/valid... how? Just because people got angry over other things in the past doesn't mean we shouldn't get angry over similar circumstances today.

No. But when religion wants to be part of science class they should have some valid scientific evidence.

Perhaps then we should force science in religion classes. We shouldn't be teaching kids only religious ideas there, we should present scientific ones also so they can make their own determination.

It has nothing to do with atheism or religion. It has to do with teaching science in a science class.

Because they have no place in a science class.
The debate between creationism and darwinism is in the same state as the debate between the aether and special relativity. It's over.

Obviously not, since we're having this argument!

That's right and that's exactly the problem with it as a scientific theory and exactly the reason why it has no place in a science class. The world is entirely consistent with having been formed in its present form five minutes ago. Heck, it's even consistent with having been formed half an hour from now.

No, but ignoring evidence to the contrary doesn't make it disappear. Also, see the bit I quoted above.

Perhaps the gal with the blog forgot to say the following:

Creationism does not have any testable propositions, so it's not science, so it should not be taught in science classes. It can be taught in religion-related classes, or culture, history etc.

With all due respect, horsepunky. Teach genetics, teach biology, facinating stuff ... evolution and creationism can both take a hike. Neither belong in any classroom, much less the science one. Maybe history, if the teacher is a sub ...

Believing that everyone becomes good by learning science is a religion. I don't mean that learning science is good. I don't mean that learning science is bad. I do believe learning science is worth while. But I don't believe everyone becomes good by learning science.

http://comics.com/comics/pearls/archive/images/pearls20080101047736.jpg

Why do you say that? you are wrong. Evolution is a scientific theory. It may be a false scientific theory (it's not, but more on that later), but it's propositions are testable. On the other hand, the propositions put forward by Creationism are not. Creationism does not even have propositions.

Evolution is not false. There is a big amount of evidence. Evolution is proven in the micro scale (microorganisms mutating), and there are certainly so much evidence in the macro scale that it can be considered proven.

I don't understand why religious people oppose evolution. What's so wrong in nature evolving by itself? evolution doesn't really contradict Christianity, unless one is gullible enough to believe in Adam, Eve and the fallen angel.

Do you oppose to the fact that universe has laws? I don't think you do. These very laws are the ones that make computers possible. But if the universe has laws, then by definition it's not a static universe; if it was, then laws would not be required. Since the universe is not static, it evolves. Evolution is a fact of life.

Personally, I do not mind if my distant ancestors were monkeys. It certainly does not make me less worthy somehow, of being human. I am judged not by what I was, but by what I do.

Chris has given us something that we lost I think. Look at you guys! I have a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Allegro has been revived!

Anyway, my new years resolution:

1. Prove that god does not exist
2.
3. Profit

Well if you manage to do the 1st part the 2nd and 3rd are not doable. You would be burnt like a witch before that. sigh Better go do something better.

My "religious" and "pro-evolution" periods of life overlap greatly. I've said it in a hundred threads, I'll say it in a hundred more, and the religion bigots still won't get it: I used to believe in Evolution but don't anymore because of it's own (lack of) merits. Nothing more. Nothing less. It won't stop some people from crying "omg religious nut" whenever I do, but I guess that's just how you enlightened, open-minded people operate.

Evolution is a scientific theory. Therefore, you cannot say it is not false. If it was absolutely known to be true, it would be a law, not a theory.

Well, that is the core of Christianity, but I fail to see how evolution even contradicts Adam/Eve/fallen angel.

Good thing no-one here follows that religion, or this conversation would go nowhere!

Thankfully we are probably in general agreement of the merits of school and teaching our young the things our species has managed to learn.

Given that it is a scientific theory (standing above an idea and a hypothesis), it means it is likely true. If it's ever shown to not be true, it will stop being taught and a new theory will eventually come up to take its place. But even there, the only way it can be proven false is for people to actually study it and debunk it on its own merits, not by someone who doesn't fully understand what it actually is or how it works.

If evolution is true, and we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? I bet nobody ever thought of that! So there, I disproved evolution!

V pna'g jnvg gb frr ubj znal jvyy gnxr Znggurj'f ynfg cbfg frevbhfyl.

Mmm... you couldn't understand what evolution is about, so you went with the easy answer: "god made it all in seven days". Is that how all religious nuts operate?

Where did you get the weird idea that in science "theory" means something that could be wrong and "law" means something that is absolutely true? Please, please look up what "theory" means in science (or re-read the various explanations that have already been posted).
It's called the theory of gravity, with "Newton's law of gravity" being that theory put in mathematical form.
The theory of gas dynamics and thermodynamics is based on postulates called the "laws of thermodynamics", which every experiment has shown to be consistent, but which can never shown to be correct from first principles.
The theory of special relativity follows immediately from the postulate that the speed of light is a universal constant, but it's not possible to show rigorously that the speed of light is constant, all one can do is try to disprove that it is.

I could go on but let me just conclude with saying that nothing in natural science can be shown to be "absolutely true", all experiments can do is disprove something. Failure to do that certainly suggests that something is true, but it does not proof that it is. Only in mathematics is there a sense of absolute truth.

When Darwin's theory of evolution is replaced by a new theory, it will be a theory that encorporates Darwin's theory as a special case or as an alternate formulation in specific circumstances since the two must agree in situations where both apply. That theory will not be divine creation.

Technically, you share a common ancestor with monkeys (apes, actually).

That depends on wether you think Genesis 1:20-27 should be taken literally or not.

Was Adam an ape ?

No, no. When someone mentions Adam & Eve all you need to do is to point out that they only had sons. Then wait a bit.

According to all atheists, yeah!

BTW, where did I say I was a young Earth creationist? See, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

"Earth is flat!"
"No, it's round!"
"No, it's flat!"
"No, it's round!"
"Are you aware that the equatorial radius is 6,378.1 km, but the polar radius is only 6,356.8 km?"
"OMG, it's flat!"

Wait for them to respond with this verse?

Yeah, of course. Genes are meltable between brothers and sisters without any consequence. All the world is populated of brother and sisters. Black and white are brother and sisters !

What verse do they have for that ? Knowing that the first time they saw black people they tought they were animals...

{"name":"ds20080105.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/e\/5ea4c586283f3ac474c3d822e5efeece.png","w":936,"h":300,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/e\/5ea4c586283f3ac474c3d822e5efeece"}

Heh. Thanks Matthew for pointing me this genese book.

Some read about it bring me there:
"Lot's daughters, fearing that they will not find husbands and that Lot's line will die out, make their father drunk and lie with him; their children become the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites.[43]" (c) Wikipedia

Now that's nice. The holy bible tell us how to have incestuous relationship with your parents without problem.

I was forced to post that because as I feel hilarious reading that book, I can not resist.

What about condoms ? Aborted pregnancy ? Stupid religions.

Plus the fact human is on earth for more than million years and that these silly books only exists for thousands years :-p

I took that from a site I do not remember ( stupid copy paste heh )

It says that people have dated the creation of earth using the bible. Mind what, the earth ( dixit the bible ) is at her maximum 75000 years old.

Mwah !

I stop there. As you said 23, enough violence ;-)

EDIT: some typos

Not everything in the Bible is endorsed as being good! In fact, it's a knock on the Moabites and Ammonites, who were Israel's enemies.

That's quite progressive! Most literal creationists date the earth to be a maximum of 6,000 years old from when humans were created.

In a sense, that's true! All humans share a common male ancestor and a common female ancestor (but they lived several millenia apart). Also, the genetic diversity in the human race is very small (humans are remarkably uniform), which suggests that at some point in the past ten thousand years the human race consisted of a few hundred individuals (I can't remember the number and I can't be bothered to look it up, a hundred is my best guess, might have been a few thousand). Most of this information from The Ancestor's Tale if anyone cares to look it up.

I always think of the old testament as the book that tells you what god's rules are and how you can get away with breaking all of them.

I've heard that Ghengis "Adam" Khan is quite the patriarch.

Dude, if it's mentioned in the Bible and God doesn't immediately smote the participants with 47 lightning bolts, it's totally cool!

Yeah, it's quite progressive. As it is written in French, I complete my last post:

James Ussher said that the world started at 4000 before J.C. His studies were published in 1650 in a book named "les annales de l'Ancien et du Nouveau Testament" (I dunno the translation ;-) ).
His conclusions were quickly accepted as final by the church men.

John Lightfoot who said that is is at least 75000 years old was severely bashed by church men. ( I tried to translate from the French paper ).

Teeehehehehehe

Heh, if I was adopted by Adrianna Karembeu, yeah, I would try the drink thing ;-)

I'd translate that as The Annals of the Old and New Testament.

My question for all people who think the Bible is literal truth: I challenge anyone to actually read through the Bible and determine that it is internally consistent. How can contradictory things all be true?

That's somewhat misleading, it makes it sound like they're direct ancestors.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/neanderthals/mtdna.html

Inconsistencies do not imply contradictions. If you could prove a contradiction, then you would shatter the faith of millions of people. No one ever has; no one ever will. The Bible is poetic and ambiguous enough to justify any inconsistencies with a little bit of creativity.

Most people focus on silly little phrases taken out of context to point to "contradictions." But if you want to make a Christian think, you have to go beyond that. Challenge their theologies on a "philosophical" (for lack of a better word) level, not on a anti-contextual verse vs verse basis.

All right, laying aside the idea of direct contradictions for the moment, let's look at the quotes.

Not only are these quotes advocating behavior that is completely immoral, but, going back to the question of direct contradictions, how do you reconcile this with "Thou shalt not kill"?

EDIT:
Also, what are your definitions of "inconsistency" vs "contradiction"? They seem the same to me.

I haven't double-checked my sources on this so correct me if I'm wrong, but if you look in the original Hebrew, the word for "kill" used in that verse is ratsach. In the New Testament where Jesus said it (to endorse the commandment), it's written in Greek as phoneuo. Both times the words actually mean "murder", not killing in general. As you note, the Bible endorses killing in certain situations and even makes allowances for accidental killing. But yeah, murder is bad, mmkay?

I'm not sure what the last two quotes are supposed to mean. That's not immoral, that's just cultural, and I understand some churches still do it. I don't agree with it personally, but I don't consider that grounds for saying it's immoral. EDIT: My bad; I can't read. That was more response to the last quote. I'm not aware of anyone engaging in slavery around these parts.

A contradiction is stronger. For instance, I can display inconsistent behavior, but perhaps it can be explained when you consider the different circumstances in which I exhibited them. This is much different from a "proven contradiction." But I don't really care if you use the same words or definitions as I.

This is what I mean by trying to play with verses. Here you are pulling out a commandment for individuals (which surely implies murder) and applying it to war. It may seem inconsistent when you don't consider the context, but it's definitely not any contradiction. You're not going to win any arguments with stuff like that.

Justifying total annihilation of nations is of a different nature. I think it's something worth discussing. The traditional answers aren't very compelling to me, but in general they revolve around Israel being a theocratic nation at the time. But come on, in the end everybody who doesn't believe (regardless if they ever heard) ends up in an eternal lake of fire enduring pain and suffering forever. I think in light of that, the first two verses you quoted are relatively unimportant in terms of what's fair and moral.

The advice to slaves is good; I don't know why you quoted that. Consider the context:

He's just saying that you should respect authority. Slave owners are one of such things. What do you expect Paul to say? Tell slaves that if their masters are jerks they should be disrespectful?

Your last quote is taken out of a passage that instructs the church to conduct services in an orderly fashion. I really don't know how the church then was configured, but obviously the women speaking was a source of disruption. I've heard all sorts of reasons why that was true, including things like the women and men were located in separate areas; any communication between the two would obviously be disruptive.

The overall message is to conduct orderly services; that's what should be taken from it. There's nothing immoral about that.

When reading letters written to specific people and churches, I think it's important to consider them in the time and place they were written. Most of the New Testament is simply advice given to churches. Little of it is direct commandments in the sense of "thou shall" and "thou shall not." Those sorts of lists is not really what Christianity is about.

The quotes about women and slaves are not here quoted for their advice to people in whatever year BCE, it's to provide context on the sort of society the Bible was written by. From the perspective of civil rights, our society today is much more civilized then Hebrew society in x BCE, and to insist that a book written by such a society is still 100% infallible and applicable to modern life is unreasonable. The point of this last series is not to go after religion in general, just those branches of Christianity who claim that the Bible is infallible, literal truth.

From a historical context, it kinda is. Did you hoestly expect them to write everything in future tense for later generations? 1 Corinthians and 1 Peter 2:18 are letters, dude. Chill out and stop ignoring context. Better yet, stop pretending others do. Being that literal is just idiotic.

I already stated that the letters themselves were written to specific people in specific times. Whether or not the Bible is "outdated" has no bearing on whether or not it has no contradictions. You seem to be flipping your agenda.

One of the most important thing about science, to me, is that I can test it myself.

Science and religion have a lot of things in common. Both typically have some supposedly important people preaching about some supposedly important information. There are "holy texts", which talk about how the world works and why things happen. There are reasons and explanations for all sorts of things. It's all very interesting and exciting. If you look in these things with fresh eyes, science and religion seem to run in parallel for a long way.

No one can learn all the important ideas of science or of religion from fundamental principles alone. We just don't have the time or the intelligence. We must rely on what other people have worked out and written down. We have to trust that some of what other people have said is true. The challenge is to work out who to trust. Which parts are right and which are wrong.

But it is the works of science, not religion, that make precise and definite predictions about the future. It is science, and not religion that make all of modern technology possible. The predictions of science are testable, observable, and falsifiable - while the 'predictions' of religion typically are not.

So if you ask yourself, "is what I believe really true?" Scientific textbooks offer detailed instructions for how you can use your own eyes, hands, ears, etc. to show yourself that it is true. The bible overs no such details. Instead, it offers empty promises and threats.

Put another way, when asked "why should I believe you?" Science says "because I only say what you can see. Look around you, and you can test for yourself what is true and what is not." The bible says "If you don't believe, you'll be sent to hell. In hell you will suffer for all of eternity. So you'd better do as I say, or else!" Incidentally, a lot of people don't like the sounds of that, so they have removed "hell" from their believe system. (That kind of freedom is one of the benefits of religion, I suppose. "What the bible says is absolute truth and should not be questioned! But that part there is wrong, and that part isn't meant to be taken literally, and that part only makes sense in the original language...")

I believe in what I can see and understand myself. I can see the works and wonders of science. I am sceptical of everything that I am told, by anyone, unless follows from what I already know. Christianity relies on believing what other Christians say, and what is written in special story books. That does not seem very sensible to me.

There's a quote that I'm always reminded of whenever I think about anything like this. It is perhaps the wisest thing I've ever read:
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own sense of reason and your own common sense." - Buddha

That pretty much sums up my views on the matter. Well said.

Most ignorant statement so far.

Can you please test evolution yourself then and verify to me that it happened? Or the big bang theory? Test it yourself them come back and show me your proof, I don't want to rely on scientists who say it's happening.

Also, you can test religion. I have personally experienced it, but I'm not going to go into detail because it's a waste of my keyboard to type it as it would be used as fuel for the debate or not taken seriously anyhow.

If you take the quote out of the context of the rest of the post, then of course you can poke holes at it. I disagree that it's "ignorant" in context. There's a close parallel in how the average person relates to science and religion. Most people are too apathetic to check and confirm things themselves, whether it be in their religion or in science.

No you cant. I just asked God to turn my monitor off... He didn't. Damn. He must not be available. Oh well, better luck next time with "testing".

I just asked Darwin to make my dog evolve into a super dog, and it didn't work. Damn, must be evolution doesn't work that way.

Hey, you said that religion could be tested, not me. I didn't say that evolution could be tested.

That's just the thing: you can't test it in an objective way (stated differently, religion is not a rational thing - this is not a judgemental statement, just an observation). You need to "feel" it or "experience" it. So no, you cannot test religion.
You face a similar problem when you try to objectify "beauty" or "love". These are subjective concepts.

It's actually called big bang model, not theory. This distinction is important since the two words mean different things.
Now, I could in principle test those things (but I may need specialised equipment I don't have), but you wouldn't belief what I said anyway since

What about OGM ? Give me some time and I will build you a super dog. Genetic science is there for that, you should know that.

Here in France we have a song ( I must have said that in an other topic there) who said:
"I pray god when I am in the shit. He knows, so he leave me in"

Now, for your personal evolution, please go visit this.

And if you do not feel to be a product of the human evolution, then kill yourself. Doing so, and with an infinite amount of luck/faith/whatever you will meet StPierre.

I am always impressed by god shampoo brain washed people. They think that sect are bad, without understanding that they are member of one of the bigger.

Now, let's come to the caviar, what are the various religions excuses for all the evil they had done during only 2000 years of domination ? Bwah ! That make me sick.

Remember Galilee, Copernic, ...

Some of us here love to make great comparison between some way of doing things and the Nazis.

For a time, I will give you my opinion: Religions are worst than Nazis themselves.

I will never understand how people doing computer programming or math or physics can really believe in god.

I will call that the American contradiction, not because I got something against American people, but because they are the most representative part I can find to illustrate my mind.

ON A SIDE NOTE:
I must say that faith is one of the bigger leit-motiv ever created for the human. The only pity there is that the human is so silly it can not have some faith in himself, he is half brained and do not understand that the only thing that will save him is HIMSELF and only HIMSELF.

Perhaps I have already said that I will stop, but I should not say things like that.

One of the things that really make me mad is that you do not understand French enough well for me to crush every religion you would bring to me.

And the incredible thing is that even if I do not like religions, I love you all. Because I got a faith bigger than yours.

Remember that:
In HUMAN I trust.

EDIT:

Heh, I left this gem !

You are right there. Science and evolution have no faith in something else than time. Give me a million year and we will see how changed will be your dog.
Also, science and evolution have no faith in something supernatural doing things for them. Darwin is now dust and feed the earth.

In some way, Darwin is now as god: you can pray him as longer you want, that will no change nothing

Of course not. He's probably thinking "Bugger off, I ain't your lacky. Go do it yourself".

Patience, young man, is a mandatory virtue here (plus a large number of generations stemming from your dog, and the ability to live forever, or close to). Natural evolution takes a long, long time and over a substantial number of generations of a species.

Also Darwin is dead. Unless, in your parallel, you're implying that god is dead. That's quite Nietzsche-ist.

Boooooooooo-ring. Make it build itself and I'll be impressed.

Look, BAF, with theories such as "evolution" and "the big bang" things are pretty complicated. There can never be any scientific 'proof' for exactly what happened in the past, because we don't have any way to test that. ie. we cannot go back in time to see what really happened. But we can gather a lot of evidence.

There is a huge body of evidence, including some mathematical theorems, which support the existence of evolution. You can write your own computer simulation to see it in action; or perform certain experiments on living things with short life spans. I feel that it is beyond doubt that evolution is a very real phenomenon. But it is difficult to demonstrate precisely what role (if any) evolution played in the origin of different species. You are probably aware that much research has been done in field, and that the primary evidence (for the claim that certain species evolved into certain other species) comes from fossil records and DNA samples. There are certain similarities between species that are consistent with the theory of evolution, but would otherwise be unexpected.

The big bang stuff is pretty much the same. We have researched and tested the laws of physics in the present time. We are able to make amazingly accurate predictions about the results of certain experiments. Our knowledge of physics can be used to see the future in some cases (eg. predicting the results of experiments). Likewise, in some cases, it can be used to understand the past. The theory that the universe was spawned by a particular kind of big bang thing is very well supported by evidence that we can measure today. That's what this cartoon is about. (it is this)

If you are unsatisfied with the way these experiments were carried out, or unsatisfied with the way the results were recorded and presented; by all means, I invite you to gather the required resources to repeat any experiment you have doubts about. Repeating experiments is very important in science. We certainly can't afford to just rely on one person to do it all. They might have screwed it up! But first, I suggest that you start smaller. Before you can understand the big bang, you need to understand a lot about electrodynamics and relativity.

There's the rub; see. I know that not everyone can afford the time to learn all about science to test every scientific claim themselves. You do end up having to trust some people if you want to get anywhere new. But at the very least, you can satisfy yourself that the scientific method is sound; and that if you really are willing to commit yourself, you can pick whatever scientific theory you like and see the evidence for yourself. That's the point.

That's already the case. Where do you think all the dog types come from ? All dogs come from a type of canis. Canis Lupus or Canis Aureus. There was no Yorkshire or Poodle some few thousand years ago.

Wikipedia to the rescue !

Problem solved, what's next ?

Um, the context here is testing and proof. A link to an article about the species wouldn't impress a creationist (since this is long since explainable without resorting to evolution) so it doesn't do a whole lot for me either. Fail!

I think it has a lot less to do with time and more to do with money and resources ...

Care to share? (No, I don't know the creationist explanation - I won't buy it, but I'd like to know).

Note aside: breeding dogs from wolves, or a variety of dog from other dogs is not evolution, but it is something closely related to the line of reasoning Darwin used to come up with evolution (his example involved pigeons if I recall correctly).

Amusing, since you basically just gave it ....

I think we can agree that "not evolution" wouldn't impress a creationist, right?

Hmm. Somehow I was expecting something better.
Evolution (by natural selection) is the logical application of the same principle. Somehow I was expecting a more systematic answer that would cover a bit more ground rather than a simple dismissal of the idea on a flawed example.

If I can go off on a tangent, I'd like the hear the creationist interpretation of ring species (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species), since most arguments against evolution seem to come down to "you can't turn one species into another species".

Yes, you can test evolution. It has been done. Viz this: Testing Darwin, Discover Magazine. Please do some research before making scientific statements.

It's not testing the right thing in order for it to make an impression on "the other party". What it tests is that if you have inheritance and random mutations, then any kind of selection mechanism will eventually cause a population which excels at the trait you select for (example: fish in the North Sea are getting smaller because small fish are not caught by fishers and survive). That's just statistical inevitability. Monte-Carlo integration methods work in exactly the same way.

What I think it needs to show is that out of one single type of "creature" you can end up with several different "species" after a given amount of time. Species that are as different as a mouse and a hyena, or a snake and a cat, an elephant and a honeybee (this requires a good definition of "species" first). Now, to me, different species are a logical consequence of small changes accumulated on a geological timescale (which is too long to really imagine or have a feeling for), but "they" are not buying that. You need to find a way to argue this point that "they" will accept.

Precisely. Those who don't accept evolution are unwilling to take the jump from micro to macro. (I'm using those terms loosely, not strictly according to whatever their scientific definition may be.)

There are creationists who participate in breeding for certain traits in animals. It's obvious that they accept "evolution" on that scale. But they don't believe that they can breed their dogs to grow usable wings.

Maybe that article doesn't do justice, but I'm not sure what problem a creationist would have. The definition of species as breeding or not is a scientific one and a distinction that a creationist who even believes in "micro evolution" really wouldn't bother making. If a bird loses the ability or desire to breed with a bird its ancestors may have, I think a creationist would view that as a negative.

I think one of the main problems here is the definition of "testable" and "verifiable".

Some people seem to think that subjective personal experiences define absolute and objective truths -- an obvious contradiction. I see arguments like "I had an epiphany; god himself told me that he made the world in six days" and "this scientific theory doesn't apply to my everyday experience, therefore it must be false".

At the risk of being redundant, I'll mention that the scientific method and the religious way of explaining things are not equivalent at all.

Religion: Here's the dogma, your world view must match our teachings.
Science: This is the physical world, your model must match what you observe.

Science does not claim that its answers are the absolute truth, it just proposes models to describe how the world behaves. Religion does claim that its answers are absolute truths and if you don't believe in them you'll be condemned to hell . Saying that they are equivalent just shows a complete ignorance of what science is and how it works. The same could be said about those who think that science is completely opposed to religion; science doesn't deny the existence of a god, it simply doesn't take it into account for its models.

Now, let's see the religious guys mock this post by saying that science is a religion.

Science isn't a religion, but that doesn't stop some people from religiously believing in it.

What makes you think "religion" makes any pretense of explaining anything outside its own scope? It's like an instruction booklet for a video game. Want to know about this game? Read this book. Want to know about something else? Go read something else.

I don't see any wrong in religiously believing in science. Well, lots of people have done bad things therefore, but also good things - as in believing in any religion, I guess. But it's sad that some people say they are non-religious and in the same time they have this faith in science, a faith in the idea that studying science will make you a happy human and will reveal the meaning of life or potrzebie. It is not a part of the concept of science itself, that it might make you happy/blessed/potrzebie.

(replace potrzebie with any religious/atheistic/agnostic superlative for goal in life)

That, and they don't believe fossils that say otherwise. However, that would be an interesting experiment to do. The problem is it would take too much time to do. Maybe something could be done with mice, but even then I doubt it could be done in a single human lifetime. I suppose one would start with selecting mice that can jump further than other mice and then take it from there.

Hmm. Well, it's nescessary to properly define what is meant by a "species" before one can even start comparing notes.

Well... one surely cannot expect more than one species of bird turning into another (closely related) species of bird in such a small step in the chain. The cool thing about ring-species is that it illustrates that two different species (which were identified as such) can be related by a continuous chain of varieties that are seperated in space rather than time (as is the normal case).

People quoting Genesis 1 as something that really happened?

EDIT

I don't know anyone who thinks like that, and it's entirely stupid to study science with that intention. Personally, I derive a lot of satisfaction from studying science. Beyond that, without the scientific (medical) progress made in the past hundred years or so, I would have been dead, another reason I'm profoundly happy with science - as to the meaning of life, there is none in any objective sense of the word. We just do the best we can.

Now for the obvious: if you work out which part of brain chemistry makes you feel happy and how to stimulate that using some kind of drug or machine, then science can indeed make you a very happy human being.

The article I posted does indeed prove evolution. While the programs involved are not obviously "species", if you read the article, you would see that one evolved the ability to do a complex mathematical operation that wasn't programmed into them. This is akin to cats evolving claws. At what point do you consider it a new species?

I personally don't have a problem with the idea of evolution. I just don't buy into the idea that humans evolved from bacteria that spontaneously appeared when a bunch of matter decided to invent itself and explode.

I like it as much as I like the idea of a being that magically came into being and wanted to play God.

I did.

I did.

I'd have chosen trilobites evolving eyes, but yes, it's the same point. You don't need to try to convince me though,

this what you're up against.

You can argue every point in elaborate detail, counter each argument, string a coherent and sound chain of reasoning and pile one piece of evidence on top of another. In the end "I just don't buy it" is all you get for your trouble.

Well, that is the question, is it not? At no point is evolution discontinuous. The only reason we can put discrete labels on different species is that (normally) we don't see the intermediate stages (ring species being the exception to the rule). Thank god (pun intended) for gaps in the fossil record!
I think the inability to succesfully interbreed is a common and useful definition of what defines different species (yes, you can sometimes make hybrids from two species, mules for instance, but they are sterile). Obviously that wouldn't work very well for the simulation described.

EDIT

That's another objection I have to invoking divine intervention to explain anything: saying "god started everything" doesn't actually answer the question where we came from because it leaves unanswered the question where "god" came from.

God didn't come from anywhere. He just "was".

Get a better example then. Flawed ones get dismised. I'm efficient like that.

It wasn't? They specifically "rewarded" any evolution that moved closer to performing the result they wanted (an equals operation). Not to mention one objection of people opposed to the theory evolution is the idea that these mutations can make a big enough impact on the function of an organism, on their way to a more complex form, to significantly improve it's survivability. Having someone or something oversee like that seems more like the "God-did-it" model to me. This isn't "proving evolution". This is a toy you write for Speedhack. Cook the books and you can have any result you like. I'm sure it works just fine, I'm also sure it proves jack.

What's intended and what people do with what's intended are two different things. Science proves there's different races; does that mean people are justified in racism? Whoever you want to credit the writing of Genesis 1 to, it's obvious he was aware that our origins don't matter worth a spit or he's have spent more than a page on it. Whether evolution or creation is right or some variant or combination of either doesn't even matter, which is why it's funny watching people get worked into a lather over it. And it's also why the Bible doesn't bother "explaining" it, or anything else. My analogy to the video game instructions still holds.

Well, there's a problem "religiously" believing in anything, if your definition of the word falls along the "blind faith" cliché. Just have a reason for thinking what you think. Most people do anyway.

No one's making scientific statements. You're not showing us anything we haven't already seen though.

For some stange reason, I can relate to this. Can't imagine why though. Nope.

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Yes, it proves something. Nature "specifically rewards" organisms that can, for instance, see better or run faster in terms of survival benefit. The "rewards" in the Avida experiment did not exceed those in real life and real (or biological; the Avida version is just as real as anything) evolution by an amount that would render the experiment unreliable, if indeed it was exceeded at all. Anyway, you can explain away any scientific discovery with accusations of cooking the books; try having some faith in the scientific establishment. We can be reasonably certain that not all the scientists involved in any experiment were ignoring scientific ethics, especially when the experiment has been repeated.

That's not the point you need to make. "They" don't want you to show that selection (even natural selection) works, that's just elementary statistics. What "they" want you to do is start with something that's neither bird nor crocodile and end up with birds and crocodiles after a few hundred million years of natural selection - without pointing to the fossil record.

You and I can argue that the way to evolve wings is straightforward when you favour species that jump around trees with sheets of skin between their fingers and keep selecting those that are best adapted, but "they" will just say that they "just don't believe it".

It's amazing that people don't understand what testing means in the context of science. Evolution can be tested by monitoring how species mutate. The big bang theory can be tested by measuring the cosmic background radiation. Religion can be tested by ...how? it can't be tested. Test means: (1) observation -> (2) theory formulation -> (3) experimentation -> (4) analysis of results -> (5) proof.

Religion is stuck in phase 3, experimentation. Experiments can not be made on religion. It's not possible to even formulate a test, let alone conduct it.

It's kind of worrying that religious people don't understand that their God is no more right than the Gods of other people. If there was a supernatural entity that created the universe, then it would be God for everyone. As it is right now, there are different Gods, who all claim to be the true ones. Than alone is sufficient proof for the non-existence of such an entity.

However, when they consistently "disbelieve" scientific evidence, it constitutes more evidence that they are unreasonable.

But it is written in the Bible. The Bible is the truth because it helps people, even alcoholics. I used to be an unbeliever like you until I accepted Jesus, you should try it. Its a great high. And if you get started I can be your religious dealer.

(Note: I'm not mentioning religions by name, 'cause I tend to forget these kinds of things, AND to prevent upsetting people by my bad memory.)
A person who believes in A_RELIGION told me that their god is all of the gods that ever were, and all gods that will be. Kinda cool.
Another person, who believes in ANOTHER_RELIGION told me that their god and all other religions' gods are all the same divine entity. People just interpret this god's messages differently. That's kinda cool too.
So, aren't those two religions therefore the most enlightened according to the quote?
(Not trying to attack anyone. Just my two cents)

Who answered the question of where the shit involved in the big bang came from?

Actually, based on what was said earlier about the terminology, wouldn't step 2 be a "hypothesis," not a "theory," to be proper?

Still, I understand what you were trying to say and I do agree with the point that (at least for now) experiments cannot study many "religious" beliefs.

That assertion seems to run somewhat contradictory to your next statement, though:

It actually doesn't prove anything, because the existence of a lot of conflicting beliefs (none of which may be right) doesn't do anything towards proving the belief that they're all wrong. It's actually exactly as you said before: there is no way to prove it, because no experiment can be done. Atheists have their own brand of "faith", too: that all theistic systems that ever have been and ever will be devised are wrong. It can't (yet? ever? I don't know) be proven.

how about gaia ? offer some grain to her around Ostara (easter) and she will multiply it for you

according to science .. there was no matter before the big bang so that matter could not have decided to explode

I do believe in evolution .. evolution is a way of "thinking" but just diferent

science compatible explanation .. your brain works by neurons reacting on eachother.. evolution works with species reacting on eachother..
( there wouldn't be any evolution with just one species)
so if you see nature as a super organism .. nature is thinking

A lot of people claim that without religion there would be no morality. My thought is, it's a lot better for people to be moral because they want to avoid causing pain to others rather than because they are greedy/scared about divine reward/punishment.

Not all religions are about reward and punishment

People from the ones that aren't in general don't start claiming that without their religion there would be no morality.

Ok. So (I realise I may have a hazy correction of previous discussions and getting confused over who said what at some point, correct me if I am), if I have a problem with religion because people take it literally, that's a problem with those people, but if some scientists don't do their job properly, that's a problem with science?

Non sequitur. Wether people are justified in racism is a matter of ethics, not science.

So, in your opinion, the Bible does not explain "where we came from"? If that's so, why are people looking for that answer in the Bible?

Personally I'm not interested in proving (or disproving) that "they" are unreasonable.

Who said that was a settled question? There's all sorts of speculation going around that try to interpret it in terms of string theory. Anyway, I'll give you what I think the best answer we have is (which doesn't involve string theory): a quantum fluctuation of the same type that occurs everywhere around us. In other words, something rooted in the same physics as the world around us.
Now for some nit-picking, in no particular order: it didn't "come from anywhere," since it didn't exist before the big bang. The big bang is a model, not a theory. It's the model that best fits observations of the universe (or don't you believe in expansion of the universe and cosmic microwave background radiation?), but the theory nescessary to describe it self consistently must combine general relativity and quantum field theory (in other words, it must be a "grand unified theory"). We don't have any such theory at the moment, so the details are uncertain.
I've said it at least twice in this thread alone, but I'll say it again: that a scientific theory is incomplete does not mean that it is wrong, noting that it (or our understaning) is incomplete does not proof anything (also, http://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/594513/719347#target).

that may be true

I think morality is in all beings to some extend...

Um, we don't? Read on ...

We know this. The scientific method is useless as fsck on anything that can't be reproduced and repeated in a testable environment. That's a helluva lot more than "religion". You would have to be one narrow-minded individual if all you could believe in is what you could experiment on. Would you discount the historical evidence for the Bible's credibility alone, merely because you can't experiment on it?

I believe your scientific evidence. I just don't read into it more than it's worth. Be careful before you start to sound like chris27wjoyner ...

While true .... they generally aren't. The homeless situation in Winnipeg springs to mind immediately; the city's too busy putting up a Human Rights museum to care about the humans walking the streets. Only one really doing anything is the Christian mission on Princess St, rehabilitating addicts, getting them training and jobs, while no one else gives a damn. So while I'm sure it's better, I'm betting it's also baloney. No, I don't have statistics.

BTW, you're still coming at it wrong. They tend to be more moral because they've been born again with Jesus' spirit. Perhaps this will speak to you at your level.

Nope. On the contrary, any problems I have with both science and religion pretty much boil down to people.

Keeping the context in mind, "ethics" don't explain anything. Science does, as has been much touted in this thread. I don't doubt for a minute there's some white supremacy group who's stuck scientific proof (insert race here) is inferior in their newsletter.

While it is not a good idea to globally accuse scientists of "cooking the books", it certainly can be done. A case in point is the "scientific proofs" of racial superiority.

While I do believe (somewhat) in a benevolent supernatural force that tries to cause people to be morally good, I do not believe that it is limited to those who declare that that particular force is the only true one and that worshipers of all others are heretics.

I'm not accusing globally. I'm simply pointing out an explicit example in the article you posted. That's, like, one.

All right, perhaps the distinction I'm trying to make is that if a person is using science to support/attack moral stances, it requires an extra look, and is often suspect.

Replace "science" with "anything" and we're on the same page.

Say "anything except morality".

Because we have not answered a question does not mean there is some god hidden behind ;-)

But when you think about it. I can almost understand why people believe in a god. Think about it. We all die. Our relatives die. Everyone we love dies. And to think that they ( and you ) all end up in a void... In nothing. Depressing actually. Believing in an afterlife makes you believe that you will see your relatives and friends and continue living.

But I just understand why others believe in this. I still cant though.

A belief in an afterlife doesn't necessitate a belief in (a) god.

Ok KC, I didn't mean to be ignorant. Sorry!

Occam's razor has a lot to do with my disbelief as well.

From what I can tell, A) Occam's razor applies in general to scientific theories; and B) it is meant to be applied when all other things are equal. In the field of scientific theories, the admittedly simplest theory applicable to any problem, "God did it,", is not in any wise equal in merit to scientific theories.

:-)

In my country, we are 98% Orthodox, and we declare ourselves as religious. The Church comes very high in polls asking "what social institution do we trust". But my country is also the first in corruption, in the European Union.

It's not really religion that helps alcoholics, drug addicts, etc. It's other people, like priests, social workers, etc. People that want to do good.

Think about it like this: if there was a supernatural entity that made the universe, would it be selective as to which people would it reveal its presence?

To put it in other words: if the muslim God was true, wouldn't he reveal himself to ALL the people, instead of SOME of the people? unless this God was a biased one, considering some of his creations more worthy to some other creations.

I wasn't talking about you, specifically.

Anyway, the historical evidence of any ancient book depends on the historical monuments we find today. Since some of what the Bible claims have been found, some of it is true. It's not all of it true, unless proven otherwise.

This is valid for any text. For example, just because the mountain of Olympus exists in Greece, it does not mean that the 12 Gods of ancient Greece existed.

This only proves that the Christian Mission on Princess St has some good people in it. On the other hand, the Orthodox Church of Greece has a vast fortune (largely made out of donations of people that did not want their land/goods to fall to Turkish hands) of several hundred billion euros worth, but the homeless in Athens have been increased at the last few years...not to mention the shameless lobbying of the head of church, mr Christodoulos, who wants the state to 'donate' public land to the Church so he can make hotels and other businesses.

So, George Bush, who is a declared Born Again Christian, lives in the spirit of Jesus? Jesus said 'turn the other chick', not 'make war', last time I checked.

And let's not go into the Catholic Church and all the crimes it has done in the past centuries...

I think 23 meant it like this. 1000 People are religious, 900 of these people follow the 'Jesus' path if you want to call it like that. 100 People will do shit to make the world worse. But those are exceptions. 90% are good.

But thinking that religion has ANYTHING to do with morality in a human is plain wrong. Humans develop the sense of whats wrong/right when they are little children. They learn from their parents. So even without religion there would be morality and ethics and the world world wouldn't go down burning...

While the hurricane Katrina was turning the city of New Orleans into Atlantis, an old man sat on his roof praying to God. A boat came along the street and some people on board shouted to the man to climb down and follow them.
"Don't mind me. I've prayed to God to rescue me."
After some hours the water had raised to the level of the top of the roof. Another boat with some other people came by. Again they wanted the man to come on board and follow them.
"Don't bother. I've prayed to God. I have trust in Him. He'll rescue me."
Again, after some hours the man was standing on his chimney, hardly being able to stay still. A new boat came by. Again the old man refused to take any help. Then he drowned.
Well, he was after all a righteous man and passed the pearly gate and all that. He finally faced God and said: "I was a bit disappointed down there. I prayed for you to rescue me, didn't I?"
Said God: "Well, I tried three times to rescue you, but you refused, you fool."

Johan, what were you doing in heaven to hear God's reply?

God never talks to me. In fact, I reckon, if anything, he has rigged the evidence around me to make it seem like he doesn't exist. With his all-mighty powers and knowledge he has set up the world so that I personally cannot believe in him. Everything I know and trust; everything I have seen and understood; everything points against his existence.

I can only conclude that either he doesn't exist, or that part of his great plan is that I don't believe in him. Either way, my path is pretty clear.

You fool ! God just do not want to be bored by geeks like you Karadoc ;-)

That's not a theory so much as it's giving up on understanding.

Maybe it would reveal itself to everyone if we just knew where to look. Maybe, as you stated, some creations are more worthy than others. Maybe it's a reclusive being that doesn't reveal itself to anyone, but is still out there somewhere. And, of course, maybe it doesn't even exist at all-- either because it never did, or because it once did but then it died. We have no proof one way or the other, so we don't know.

You can make assumptions about its behavior (it must want to reveal itself) and then based on those assumptions argue that your assertion is true, but there is no proof that those assumptions need to hold. They are as much "faith" as the belief (or lack thereof) in the entity in the first place. If you're arguing against a religion whose dogma includes the assertion that the God/supernatural being/whatever wants to reveal itself to everyone, then you've definitely made a successful argument against that religion specifically-- but not theism in general. Other cases are possible, like I said just above.

@ Amber
what if you want to reveal yourself but people don't want to see it or don't understand it ?

What if people don't want to accept a deity, because IF they do accept that deity they will also have to give other beings their place in the world instead of (mis) using them.

What if people are more attracted to religions that are about good and bad, rich and poor, the haves and the have nots.. just because they can justify their own behaviour.

A religion that tells you not to harm no matter what the rules, could be hard to accept for some

If that was the case, knowing how to find God would be common knowledge by now.

But wait a minute. Which God?

God can't be unfair or biased, otherwise he is no God.

Then it wouldn't make a difference: it would be exactly if God did not exist.

Actually, your argument reinforces my position. It is not me that says that God reveals himself to some people, it's religious people that claim it. I am simply asking the obvious: if God reveals himself to some people, then why does he reveal himself as A in one case and as B in another case?

Another logical fallacy. The majority of the world accepts a deity, but the world is full of problems. Therefore, you must either admit that (a) all bad things come from atheists or (b) the world is not full of problems or (c) your proposition is wrong.

@axilmar:

you're thinking in absolute good and evil again ...

Problems are not necessarily bad, without problems there won't be any point to learning. The world would become dull. People would have no "spirit" in achieving things.

blah blah blah... Life is not a fairytale... blah. There are no happy endings... Blah... I think this thread should have died a long time ago...

Chris actually left on the 4th page.

Actually he left on the 5th page.

No I am sure it was the fifth.

thread/ID/ = 1st page
thread/ID/1 = 2nd page
thread/ID/2 = 3rd page
thread/ID/3 = 4th page
thread/ID/4 = 5th page

So yeah, 5th page.

Talking about something else than programming or computers is good for your inner ballance

In this case it could be bad...

[edit] Damn... page 12!

That's exactly my point, and I think maybe the source of some of our misunderstanding. I'm not talking about any one religion's concept of God, I'm speaking on the abstract concept of "some higher power beyond humanity."

It's quite possible for such a thing to exist and any or all current religions to be wrong about its nature. Just because some religion asserts something doesn't mean that any god that may exist has to hold to those ideas. As I stated before, my argument isn't for or against any specific faith (including the "faith" of atheism), simply that we don't know the truth and it can't (yet? ever?) be objectively proven.

Why? There is no universal truth or natural law that requires (religious dogma doesn't count, for the reasons I stated above) that a being of immense power has to be nice. It certainly doesn't hold true on Earth for many powerful people! Just because some religion says so doesn't mean anything.

Well, if any sort of contact is impossible, then yes. If contact may be possible through means we don't yet understand, but being doesn't go out of its way to reveal itself, that's different. The notion that the god/supernatural being/whatever would want to reveal itself to everyone through easy means is an invention of some religions, and, again, see above

If they're wrong, that only means their concept of god is wrong. It is not general proof that no such being at all exists.

Being agnostic, I'd say, WE NEED MORE BOOTY SHAKIN'!!

It is not solely the idea of God that motivates people to do good. If it was, then A) morality would be limited to religious people, which is manifestly not the case; and B) it would fundamentally be greed that motivates, and/or fear of hell, not actual good feeling. These are not true.

This silly thread still going? Argh, I tried to let it die, but here's more trollbait ...

I agree completely. I keep getting drawn into your definition of religion, and if that confuses you on my position, my apologies.

None of this is a given. Why God does or doesn't do this and that is way outside the current topic really, but if you're using your idea of what God should and shouldn't do and using the fact that He hasn't done it as your basis for not believing, then we're done. You're making up your own definitions and complaining when reality doesn't fit them.

Agreed, but people oversimplify it. I want to see someone write the Biblical histroy of the Jewish people, back to Abraham, using the portions of the Bible considered authoritative and not contradicted by other historical sources, corroborate it with other historical sources, leave out the God bits, and not make it unintentionally hilarious.

You're missing the point; look at the quote I'm responding to. Everyone admits "religion" has been used as an excuse to do some pretty awful things, but what hasn't? Science? Justify nuclear weapon research to me, you hypocrites.

Again, the Christian God is defined thusly. If He doesn't fit the common definition ... so?

Well, that last one definitely isn't in either case. But I guess someone hasn't read the whole thread. How can you not agree with Bob the Angry Sunflower!?! Not sure where that "solely" came from, either ...

Gosh. I usually start my prayer with begging for an excuse for my weak faith. All you atheists on this thread have convinced me that I have even stronger reasons to pray for excuse. It seems that atheists and believers share the same God, except that the atheists don't believe in him. Both sides put a very strong emphasis on the concept of existence, a very scientific concept of existence. Atheists are sure about the lack of existence. Believers are sure of the existence. Personally I don't focus on that question. Personally I don't find that important. But just because everyone seems to base their point of view on that very question, I feel I'm a lousy Christian.

I've said it before and I say it again. I know that love is just a funny thing evolution created so that these selfish genes can have an offspring. But that doesn't make love less real for me. If I focus on the physiological and evolutional aspects of love instead of living a loving and beloved man's life, I simple wouldn't love anymore. For me this discussion about a religious/atheistic viewpoint is like discussing if love is real or just some hormonal chemical thing to prevent extinction of mankind. Now you ask if I believe evolution created and planted the idea of a God in our minds. That is kind of true, but I guess it was a smart idea of him.

Food for thought:

http://duggmirror.com/comedy/100_Greatest_Quotes_from_fundamentalist_christian_chat_rooms/

Why? Specifically. All I see is a bunch of idiots from a random niche group. Welcome to the Internet. Maybe I should make a page like that with atheist quotes from this thread, eh? Paste it in some random religion, forums, say "Food for thought" with no other comment.

That niche group is the one backing and funding the people trying to suppress our freedoms in the US. And they seem to be winning as well.

Being a minority group has never stopped people from committing acts of discrimination.

Heh, if the Internet and its chat rooms and forums were significant, Ron Paul would be President.

I reckon that's a pretty good point of view to take (for a believer ). I think that a lot of people are motivated to be 'good Christians' by the promises of heaven and the threats of hell. If you don't believe in those things, then that motivation is gone. However, there are other good reasons to believe. Religion can create a good sense of purpose, belonging, community, etc. Religion can be a way of life, and that way of life can bring benefits that are unrelated to the existence of God, Heaven, or Hell. Some religions (such as Buddhism) are entirely about this way of life thing. My understanding of Buddhism is that it is primarily about self awareness, mindfulness, clear thinking and understanding, and other stuff like that. There are no supernatural beings or divine rewards.

Anyway, all I really wanted to say is that I think it is probably wise and sensible for a clear thinking Christian to take the emphasis off the existence of supernatural beings. To me it is pretty clear that even if God and his friends exist they don't play a direct role the lives of most people, so they probably aren't the most relevant part of religion in everyday life.

(However, I do not believe that understanding the physical reasons behind "love" or anything else detracts from the experience of it. One doesn't need to understand where feelings come from to appreciate their value, but to me, an understanding of things cannot hurt that appreciation - it can only enhance it.)

It's called the sun.

Might want to contact the person who actually said that alethiophile, since everyone here probably knew ...

That list depresses me. I won't read any more of it.

And than students will quote it in their English essays! Just make sure it doesn't get to Wikipedia...

This makes me laugh. What comes out during the day and hides during the night? Now read that quote again.

I think scientists already know about it

_{Added bold like it was on the original}

alethiophile, you just got suckered. You're getting worked up about a bunch of "quotes from fundamentalist Christians" to the point where you start rebutting the quotes on an unrelated forum and talking about how the quotes depress you.

Look again at the link axilmar posted.
duggmirror.com/comedy/100_Greatest_Quotes_from_fundamentalist_christian_chat_rooms/

I understand that on the site on which they are posted, they are listed for comedic reasons. I also understand that it's pretty well pointless to rebut them on this thread--which is why I'm not doing it. I just couldn't resist lampooning the most obviously ridiculous quote. And if you, as a reasonable member of society, had read all the quotes, you'd be depressed too.

Damnit, I just posted the same quote you did. My thread-skimming skills are low

If you take a very large sample of people, and hand pick the stupidest things they say, I'm sure you can come up with a large collection of extremely stupid quotes. That should not depress you. It doesn't really say anything about humanity other than "people sometimes make mistakes".

Besides, those "quotes" may even have been made up just for the purpose of getting a few laughs.

Yes, but it's so funny. It's done everywhere. You must have read these things doctors have written or dictated about their patients, people have said in court houses, pupils have answered in tests, pupils' explanations why they are late etc.

Like most of the internet, you simply have to suspend disbelief.

My Greek is probably not up to scratch, but my mind immediately translated that as something like "mr Christ's-slave", which cracked me up.

EDIT: the quotes on that page are not funny.

I searched the web for "Athiest". 995000 hits

When you go to school, do you learn from problems or from knowledge and personal curiosity? It's curiosity that drives people, not problems.

But we are talking about religion here, which is the only thing that talks about supernatural entities anyway. In the context of religion, God is defined as omnipotent, infinitely good, infinitely wise etc.

If contact is possible but not yet achieved, it means all we have now (the bible, the people that say they have seen something etc) are a bunch of fantasies. So we are at square 1.

It is not, but by admitting so we eliminate 99% of the reasons for the being's existence.

I am not making any definitions, I am using the definitions found in the Bible. According to it, the Christian God is infinitely good, infinitely wise, and infinite in every positive quality. God contains absolutely zero negative qualities.

Therefore, such an entity should make its creations equal, by definition. If not so, then the creation of inequalities would be a deliberate act. Which comes into direct contradiction with the nature of God, as defined in the Bible.

Of course, religion is a human activity, after all. Not divine.

If you can find atheist quotes that are just as silly, then be my guest.

I posted that page to show how people can formulate illogical thoughts. The human brain does not work with logic, but with pattern matching: the results of the processing is what maximizes survival at that specific point. Survival, in this context, means survival of the model the brain has built for itself, not just survival of the body that curries the brain (although the two can be the same in most cases).

That's why, for example, a mother can say that "I found a magazine with naked men under my son's bed; it must have been left by his girlfriend". The mother, desperate to prove to society (in her mind) that she is normal, she completely misses the fact that her son may be gay. For her, she is to survive through the survival of the ideas that she represents.

I agree, and I will like to extend this further by saying that Jesus' teachings is at the core of the human experience (forgiveness, love, etc), and I wholeheartedly think that life should be centered around those teachings. All the other stuff developed around those teachings are products of the human imagination.

Right on! 'doulos' means slave. That man is so dirty, not even the cataclysm can wash his sins. He even was a supporter of the 7 year dictatorship (1967-1974) that brought the disaster of Cyprus (amongst other things).

This one I like particularly well:

Its like saying:

And then being surprised if he killed himself. Stupid b**ch!

But then again, you have the comments. On every stupid ignorant idiot there are hundreds of normal people. That should calm you.

Old.

It is not a new thing that Christians who abuse their mind with unbelievable belief are unbelievably silly ;-)

Wagner: If you read a few posts down from that, you will see the son in fact killed himself.

I think you need to study more religions.

Yeah, the "omnipotent, infinitely good, infinitely wise etc." part is mostly for monotheistic religions.
(According to my bible* teacher, the ancient Jews showed a lot of cleverness by being the first to come up with the concept of a single omnipotent incomprehensible god.)
*-blah old testament whatever etc. Just assume from now on that when I say "bible" I don't mean the new testament.

Edit: I mis-understood and said something that didn't matter.

Oh my gosh, this thread is still alive? Wow, when I stumbled upon it, I realised that it originated around Christmas. I can't believe that we cannot learn from previous mistakes and still arguing about useless things like if there's a god, flying spaghetti monster, the great A'Tuin or whatever.

Essentially discussions of this type are pointless because religious people won't stand off their arguments and from believing into some unhuman entity. As well as the people on the other side of the barricade, who claim that there's no god.

I for myself seriously doubt that there is something like a god - we simply have too many religions with different points of view, so in my opinion none of them can be right. But anyway there are some, well actually lots of people, who need something to believe in - some faith. And here is in what religion, besides controlling masses of people in the past and somehow in the present, giving something you can believe in. Something what will give you a meaning of life, if you don't have anything other to believe in.

So those are my two cents. And if you disagree, see my signature (as usual).

No, "we" aren't. You are.
As I've stated numerous times, I'm talking about the existence or nonexistence of supernatural beings/gods/whatever regardless of what human religions think of it.

No, you eliminate 99% of the reasons for that religion's existence.
The being itself will continue to exist or not exist regardless of what any human religion thinks of it.

Huckabee wants to abolish the separation of State and Church:

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Huckabee_Amend_Constitution_to_meet_Gods_0115.html

We are heading straight to a new middle ages...

Well he ain't getting voted.

Or is he? No... I'm quite sure he wont be.

Huckabee is a Southern Baptist pastor!, so I think you should know what his views are on the "hot" social topics—and most Presidents try to impress their personal views (regardless of their origins) on everything via their policies.

I don't know the context of the quote, but surely it's a direct reference to gay marriage and abortion. And of course that means he would favor constitutional amendments that 1) define marriage as between one man and one woman and 2) give unborn children the right to not be killed.

There's nothing shocking about that; Bush (along with significant number of people) favors those two things. Huckabee just is more straightforward with his rhetoric, which is good because you know what you are getting. I really doubt he'll win the Republican nomination because there's no chance he'll beat any of the Democrats.

And even if he did, you don't have to worry about the Constitution. Thirty-eight states have to approve before anything is ratified.

I think that yes, that quote is meant to apply to gay marriage/abortion, but it is still troubling. Religious views should not affect policy.

That's a circular objection, but one that many people (religious or not) like to make.

It's nearly impossible to separate "religious" views from any kind of "personal" views, or however you want to name them. You have certain ideas that you hold; so do I. But neither of us could necessarily pinpoint the exact source of them. Over our lifetimes, we've come to believe what we do now.

There are non-religious people who are against abortion. So is it okay for them to lobby to amend the Constitution to give the unborn explicit rights? If you say yes (I don't mean you have to agree with their position), then surely it's okay for a religious person to want to do the same. The ultimate source of their opinion is irrelevant.

So I would never point at someone and say, "Your views come from your religion and therefore you are unqualified to be in office." Instead, I would look at their platform and see whether or not it makes the country a better place.

A politician should not be against something because it's his personal opinion, whether he be religious or not. Instead, he should look at it from the perspective of "does it violate people's rights?" or "does it make the country worse?" or "are the people I represent against this?".

... I'm still waiting to see "Holy Wars, The Game" in the depot. Far too much debate and much too little code!

That's an unfortunate expression. I'd say that church affairs and state affairs should be strictly separated. It has been acknowledged hundreds years before and there's no purpose for re-enacting it.

Edit:

My CH07 entry has a background theme similar to holy wars. Unfortunately I don't think it's worth submitting into the depot.

All right, policies should not be implemented with no reason for them other than that some religion says so.

@ OICW and everyone else...

A nice story... read it, you might learn something

Isn't there shorter version. I bet that I'm not the only one who won't read it. (for the time being I should do something else).

No, besides it would eleminate the whole point..

But it's worth reading it.. print it out and read it in bed

Too long.

[Readers Digest]
Man is a narrow minded Christian. His work mate is a Wicca woman, which pisses him. Then he meets God and finds out that God is good and loves all Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus (were there them too?) etc. He says to our man that the Bible is a good book, as well as the Tora, the Koran etc, but only written by man trying to understand God. Then our man goes to the Wicca woman and apologizes for being an arse.
[/Readers Digest]

I honestly liked the story. I believe there lies a truth in it. Unfortunately it doesn't very well cover the atheistic point of view, but how could it? It's kind of a pantheistic message to any narrow minded monotheist.

Having read the whole thing, I quite enjoyed it. That is sort of my idea of god, not some being that favors one sect, but what might be described as the universal conscience.

I skimmed the beginning and the ending. Looked kinda like your typical flowery/religiony "OMG now go hug somebody" story. I debated reading it for hope it might be a hilarious parody of those types of stories but decided it was too long and the odds were too low.

that's got to be some sort of record. before this one (obviously) no one had commented on this thread for about 27 hours.

What do you want? This thread is 13 pages long and practically all of what could be said has been said. This flamewar argument ended like so many others before - nobody won. And it will happen again, sooner or later.

Edited.

Worst part is, everything will be repeated, including the stuff people were corrected on. KRISHANS DO GUD TINGZ CUZ DEY APHRAID UV HELL AMIRITE!?!?!

Yay lets start the thread over! I'll be first:

I went to the kangaroo about 2 hours ago, on the way there I believe I heard a Gater welp. Sounded like she was about 20 feet from me. Calling to God, and Jesus I kept on going. I had to, I was in a bad position to turn back, and running is something you do not want to try. If a gater comes after you they can do about 14mph. Me, I can do about 6mph, but I am short winded. I had decided to take the long way home, away from the same place I heard the Gater. Could have been wrong, but when something like that happens. Do not say something like "it is probably nothing." Because something did welp. And there is nothing but swamp right in that area.
"it is probably nothing." causes neglect to things that are, "probably something."

It's probably nothing.

This thread needs an assortment of Megadeth videos:

Holy Wars

Peace Sells

Hanger 18

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eKa0vLqh5OQ

How is this thread a flamewar?
To me, a flamewar is "you're a *&^*!@ and Y(@#&(!# while you !@#(&(@#, you *(@&#(@. BTW Jesus suxxx" "You'll go to hell, you @*(#*(@# (**)_)*@" "Oh, yeah? (*@!#& yourself yopu (*&# *(Y& )(*&#)@&*#"
Most of the posts in this thread (re-read: most) are strongly held opinions and disagreements, but mostly respectful of other people's standpoint.

Well, that would be most probably because I skipped 10 pages of it. So strike my last and replace the word flamewar, with argument.

As a witch I couldn't agree more

Yes God Bless you all this Christmas evening.

Jesus is my Shield, my grate and mighty tower.
God upholds me with his righteous right hand.
God and Jesus Will never forsake me, or leave me.
Jesus will in no way whatsoever put me out.
Even though I make the mistakes I do.
God still loves me, and so does Jesus Christ, My Lord forever.

Why is the word 'gator' capitalised?

God will spank your butt if you will not behave yourself.

That is why, for it was written on page 5 of the thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I always liked the guy on the radio in GTA: Vice City, "For it was written; by me."

Damnation, no donation, no salvation
( GTA 2)