If You're a Christian, Muslim or Jew - You are Wrong

[(val)Liam]

*calculates the irony of the secular dogma*

[ebbomega]

Originally Posted by Liam

*calculates the irony of the secular dogma*

Heh.

I remember when I used to be up at SFU they'd have all the student groups kicking around the Quadrangle.

The only ones that were more endowed in their ways and more refusing to accept any explanation other than their own than the Christians were the Atheists.

edit: I heard this recently, might've been on here...
"Follow those who seek truth, but be wary of those who claim to have found it."

[-ff-]

Originally Posted by Sidekick

science has been proven wrong again and again and again...what makes him think that we have all the answers this time. believing in science as the one truth is just as stupid as believing that there is a god and a heaven.

Science is not a 'thing' that can be proved wrong - science is a method - a way of asking questions about the world around us in a systematic way that puts a premium on testability. It demands proof. I don't think there is anyone who can claim that we're anywhere near having all the answers, but that doesnt mean that science and reason are not the best way we have as a species to deal with the unknown.

[(val)Liam]

one time during one of these debates a guy asked me "if god exists, why doesn't he just come out right now?!"

I didn't think to say this at the time, but I thought to myself after "because you'd blow it off as a hallucination"

[dave mcnasty]

Or because he was made up by people who knew nothing 2000 years ago....

[fable]

Originally Posted by ebbomega

PS: Faith has nothing to do with belief.

I think faith can exist IN SPITE of belief, therefore i see one depending on the other for contrast and definition.

action+mobilization
fable

[Gusto]

Originally Posted by ebbomega

PS: Faith has nothing to do with belief.

how so? faith implies belief by definition. without it, you might want faith but don't actually have it.

[fable]

don't think I have to bother explaining why people 2000 years ago were less intelligent than us today.....And if the world was going to last 2000 years further....those people would be able to discuss our deficiencies too. The fact is those people 2000 years ago were more ignorant.....they lacked the scientific knowledge of evolution and deep time that we use to explain our origins today. So.....they create a God, who, easily enough, created everything himself. Problem solved.

"Intelligence" is a loaded term, probably the only term that could be more loaded is "god" itself. If we can hypothesise that civilization 2000 years from now, will probably look at us as ignorant, then why would i still think of them that way in spite of knowing this? I was sort of being devils advocate, there were a lot of things that ancient civilizations were ignorant of, but i garantee there is just as much, if not more that we could have learned from ancient history, that would have benefited us.

I only mentioned a Polynesian tribe for an example.....You could look at any African or Asian religion or even ancient Greece, ......They're all the same in that they create, and worship a bunch of Gods that are different from the Christian God. And If you were to look today at the Greek god's of Sun and Ocean and Love and Fertility or whatever gods they had....you would be like what the fuck? And just think of them as myth. I know when I see a bunch of tribe people dancing around a fire doing some ritual I'm like wtf? But Christianity and its all powerful God is no different. It's just more popular around the world....so it's rituals and prayers and customs aren't considered unusual.

Your opinions may border on the prejudice if you take them any further. There are many peoples (ie aboriginals) who do not push their faith on you, so have some fucking respect, and dont simplify what could be ultimately very sacred to such peoples. Stating that becuase you see pagan rituals as "stupid" and then stating that your think becuase they are somewhat similair to christainity, and therefore "stupid" too is somewhat weak. I agree which much of what I think your trying to say, but i think if you didnt explain it so flippantly, it might have somewhat more of an impact and relevncy. Ideas of godly figures could be argued, were created to act as a source of many an unexplained happening, but even with the entity or method of science, the further scientists prescribe to scientific processes the closer they get to understanding that spirtuality plays a big part.

Sure you can blindly believe in something forever....so what

theory is not perpetually blind.....it's blind until it's proven. And since some theories can never be proven (such as certain astronomical theories), they are just worked out to the point where they're very logical, and probable, and then widely accepted by the scientific community as a systematically organized body of knowledge.

Faith can operate in the same capacity, in fact i personally belive that "knowledge" survives the test of time, BECAUSE of a fraction of faith existing/

And I'm not saying you have to choose Religion or Science....I really don't care. I just don't believe in Religion because I know it was made up by people who couldn't explain anything....and now that we can explain things, I really don't think we need to rely on such ancient nonsense.

I support science, and whether there is a "god" or a planet lifeforce(gaya or something like that) i think that "science will not be the method used. I think comparing the two may highlight inadequecies in both practises, but i belive that one cannot exist without the other, at this time. Perhaps we need both, to get to some sort of practise, or ideal, or theology or whatever, tha we cant really wrap our minds around.

I dont choose what little amount of spirtuality my life, nor a belief that there is some sort of god(although whoever or whatever "god" it can sure be an asshole!) becuase there are occurances in life that i just cant explain, rather i like the idea of there being things i cannot explain. If i trully belived that "science" could eventaully explain all things in life, i would see it as boring. The joy of exploration isnt just based on the fact that over some time, and over some challenge, one will get the answers, i think it also becuase through specific journeys one will find things that one just cannot explain. Im as neaortically curious as the next person, but being like WTF!?! is good sometimes.

I know you aint asking people to choose, your just explaining the way you see the world, and i respect that, i personally like the fact that i havent formed such an opinion yet, i still lots of living to do

action+mobilization
fable

[dave mcnasty]

lol well i'm not in the mood to post anything big.......but i really don't care if people wanna push their faith on me or not.....I still have an opinion on their religion and I think it's bullshit. I'm sorry if it comes off as flippant. When I see people devoting their entire lives to something that was made up thousands of years ago...praying daily...even DIEING for it....I can't help but insist how fucking ignorant they are. If some people weren't so fucking stupid then maybe the Twin Towers would still be standing....and a lot of innocent lives wouldn't be taken.

[fable]

When I see people devoting their entire lives to something that was made up thousands of years ago...praying daily...even DIEING for it....I can't help but insist how fucking ignorant they are.

I can completely understand your feelings about this. I grew up in a family where there were fundamentalist hindus, muslims AND christians, and to be perectly honest, what i saw was mainly a struggle to control, repress, and opress, so as for not being a supporter of organized religeon, you aint gonna get much argument out of me.

Incidents such as the twin towers explosion may or may not be the work of religeous fundamentalists, but i think the motivation was based more on either specific terrorist groups retaliating against US corruption, manipulation and explotaition, as much as any religeous factor.

Like i said before, i support scientific endevours, but i also support the "science of the soul"

peace+respect
fable

[(val)Liam]

at the end of the day, I've heard much better arguments and those haven't convienced me to change my spirituality...

"Like i said before, i support scientific endevours, but i also support the 'science of the soul'"

indeed...

[FlorpIncarnate]

Well that article was definitely a rant... not an argument.

I happen to agree with everything that he said.

I became a born-again agnostic while still in a private Christian school at the age of 17. The kicker for me was a purely epistemic one: belief in religion requires faith (aka: Belief with a lack of definitive evidence). Even the modern monotheist apologists (William Lane Craig for example) still admit that faith is necessary for religious belief.

Monotheistic religions offer too many answers to important questions to take them on faith alone. Some things you CAN take on faith alone... like there being bones in your arm, etc. We have a good reason to believe this based on what we have been taught about the world, but without evidence (like cutting our arm open and looking) we have to take this on faith. It isn't really a big deal to believe THAT by faith though... while believing that the universe was created by an invisible bearded dude who will torture anyone who doesn't bow down to him DOESN'T make sense to take on faith. It's just too big of a jump, without enough supporting logic.

Faith can be a useful tool, but using it to answer the BIG questions is just irrational, period.

I urge anyone who is interested in the technicalities of religious belief to read up on 'meme theory', which is one of the new sciences that has grown out of evolutionary psychology. The summary is this: ideas are also subject to natural selection. This means that ideas (memes) that are able to spread themselves more than other, competing ideas, will be favoured by natural selection and there will be more people running those memes in the next generation. This does NOT mean that TRUE ideas are more likely to be spread; JUST ONES THAT ARE GOOD AT REPRODUCING THEMSELVES.

This idea was discovered by Richard Dawkins in his book "The Selfish Gene", which is great reading!