I apologise. It was not my intention to cast aspersions on any work you do, reading your previous post I can see how you may have thought that is all that I was doing there.
I made my comment about the isolation of people and that led me to think about how the "word of god" indeed would reach such people, and then I was thinking about your opinion of the image of the Catholics, and my mind ran onto that. You cannot deny that "mission" work has in the past had a serious historical impact and I do think it has a stigma because of all that, but I did not wish to criticise you for wishing to help others at all. I am sorry.
I think that statement could do with some clarification.
Publishing his results in the journal PLoS One , he found that an average of 1.97% of scientists admitted to having "fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once – a serious form of misconduct by any standard – and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices." http://www.theguardian.com/sci ... search-fraud-bad-practice
Those are fairly high figures, and that's without going near climate 'science'.
Then, even after it's been proven false "If they get caught, their papers are retracted from journals ideally, but then what? Many times that bad science is never really truly forgotten. Scientists continue to cite those studies, and busy physicians continue to rely on them, perhaps putting patients at risk even after those studies have been debunked." http://www.npr.org/2011/08/05/ ... -wrong-turn-who-rights-it
Again, not highly reassuring. The point I'm making is that science is just as capable of being treated as a religion as any religion is. It is frequently far more about money and personal advancement than it is about science. http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet ... compromised-by-careerism/
Technocracy can be clearly defined as a religion, and a blind reliance on the 'perfect nature of science as the truth' is clearly a large step in that direction.
On a side note, it's great to see the open exchange of views going on here. Keep it up.
Oh I bet, and I bet there's never an exception to that, and I bet science is the only branch of humanity immune to ... humans.
edit: thanks Racer for the post
I think we're (talking? you sound more like you fighting to be honest) about a few different things here.
great, but you can't totally separate them because one comes from the other. The information comes from somewhere.
I made sure to qualify my comments before I made them. And I never said I was expecting to be offended, I did say I was expecting backlash, which you've provided And I'm not offended by it, in fact I stated that I understand why it happens! Chill out!
how in the world does it not???
I think believe God created the universe is a lot less dangerous than say... flying planes into buildings and otherwise killing people
I didn't look, because it's not relevant to what I said. I said what I believe, which is based off of reading and studying "the book" for over 20 years. The individual in the video is free to have a different opinion than me so I have no idea why what I said would have to explain his point of view. I'm speaking for myself and nobody else.
RIGHT - you said it - as far as WE are concerned. But there is implication and shortsightedness in that statement, because again, it implies that we have the capacity observe "everything". Nothing wrong with trying to learn, but when talking about "God" for example, if we could understand God on an intellectual level He wouldn't be much of a God in my estimation.
pretty big assertion considering you have a very small insight into exactly what I believe?
I do like how you brushed off the my point about guys with PhDs being Christians.
LOL! Do you really want to get into playing "quote the Bible"? This really shows YOUR ignorance on that particular topic, I'm not here contextually shifting your scientific journals am I? What did else did he say right around there that you left out? He summed up the law and prophets with two commands: love God and love people. But you left that out. Jesus hated religion, and loved people. He hated the institution of religion and the hypocrisy of the leaders (generally Pharisees and Saducees) and the greed and all that stuff that most people dislike about organized religion today. The context here is that people used to look on those leaders as some sort of standard, but they were corrupt (heck the whole reason they crucified Him was because He called them out and started to erode their power of the people!) That's where that comes from, and in fact bibically speaking when one "accepts Christ" or whatever you want to call it, He becomes "their righteousness" which is what he was foreshadowing in that statement at the end.
It may be time to leave the thread for me, I wasn't trying to get you all incensed.
Your rettention ability might show a high IK, IQ is problem solving. To solve a problem against evidence to the contrary (Genesis) you - by definition - prove a low IQ. There is no other way to explain ignoring or denying actual facts and choosing a made up solution because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. I do hope your IQ tests where not the Cattel test.
All of the above, but without malicious intent.
This belief that Christians - a majority group in the West - are persecuted is propaganda. Further evidence that the church can spin a lie and people will believe it. It's not fashionable to hate Christianity, and it certainly is not fashionable to hate Christians (there is a clear difference). Hating Christianity is a rational process, hating Christians would be dumb.
If you where of certain denominations then yes you would have a need to appologise, along with some immediate repenting! The acts of the Catholic church are simply outright evil, their policy on condoms is nothing short of murder. The Baptist cult actively campaigns against civil rights in my country, and instructs it's members to directly confront those it disagrees with and demands them to change (I've experienced this myself). These cults have a LOT to apologise for, and if you support them - then so would you.
So you're Jewish...
...except you aren't. Isn't it a bit late in the day to be reading and believing 4th century Roman propaganda?
The brain has many facets, but I chose to believe that you are not a lost cause. Maybe you will work out why Christianity exists, or put some rational thought in to why religions are not universal despite centuries of missionary activity across the globe (and it is a globe btw).
It's a dimension, not matter.
Your last sentence here is intelligent, although I think more along the lines of a long period event than the Rapture.
Your other ramblings on time are a little strange, Christianity asserts that Humans are the purpose of creation, Earth is the centre of all things (and ironically given your earlier statement about the speed of light, it is the centre of the observable universe - but that's easily misconstrued so lets not go there just now). My point being, Christianity has a very clearly defined frame of reference for time. It's not abstracted, it's not intangible. According to Christian doctrine Humans - who live on 1 planet - have a defined and fixed frame of reference for the passage of time upon which a day is a day is a day...
Was this reference to days metaphorical? Well that would screw up the concept of the Sabbath wouldn't it :P...
Which means he is present at, and witness to child abuse with the power to stop it.
Yet he chooses not too. Voluntarily allowing an innocent to suffer.
What kind of a bastard does that?
Either your God does NOT deserve worship, or your bible is wrong.
You're bible is also wrong in Genesis, as you've already freely admitted.
So if we remove Genesis - which itself is a compilation of 3 earlier books which was allegedly done by Moses. Which clearly indicates Moses as a fraud. Then we add that your God condones Child abuse (and in the Catholic sect encourages child rape), and frankly even if this God was real - frankly I want nothing to do with him.
no but masses of humans and competitiveness between them is a good way of making sure mistakes get pointed out quickly
if racer is you basis you have no basis
yes but fox news misrepresenting and other newschannels badly representing scientific findings or advertising people miscontruing the message to fit theirs cannot be the standard for how you measure scientific results
because it has zero relevance to either science or our life
everything that has any relevance to our life must be observable otherwise it wouldnt have any effect on our lifes and thus no relevance
our limit of observability has no relevance to the discussion at hand since the question is how the universe came to be and that is very much observable and obviously relevant to our life as well
literal belief in everything the bible says is very much dangerous to many people and im fairly certain things doctrine forbidding the use of condoms and american literal bible extremists influencing african politics to make homosexuality punishable by death has already killed a lot more people than planes being crashed into buildings ever will
we have the capacity to observe everything that has an influence of us
if a god still acts in this universe today the effect of those acts must be observable
theres a huge difference between the fairly large number of scientists who are christians that believe in a god but not a literal interpretation of the bible (which btw is pretty much unavoidable if you are a scientist since its impossible to avoid the facts of how the bible was written rewritten changed etc) and the small number of religious extremists who believe the bible word for word is to be udnerstood literally which make no mistake is a very small number of nutjobs
also havign a phd doesnt exclude you from being an idiot i work with people with degrees who are idiots every day
uhm no jesus had the goal of bringing the jewish religion back on the path he believed to be correct and similarly to luther it didnt quite go that way
you are aware that the whole jews killed jesus was retconned into the bible by evangelists who were born well after jesus had died and were working from several sources?
jesus was killed by the romans as evident by the way he died
if the jews had wanted to kill him they would have been perfectly capable of doing so themself
a very large amount of the things you think you know about the life of jesus were retconned and are impossible to corroborate with the use of other sources
Right, there's nobody getting killed for their belief all around the world. :rolleyes:
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Uhh no, no I'm not Jewish, that would mean I didn't believe Jesus was the messiah. I believe he was the Christ, hence I'm a Christian. I 'm not even bothering with the rest, this is so ridiculous
I understand the hatred of all the suffering on this planet, I really do. But blaming it on God is bizarre, when He's not doing it, once again, the abuser is a PERSON. God is not obligated to intervene in the atrocities humans DO TO EACH OTHER - what is so hard to understand about that? If you want someone to blame, blame the rapist. Simple apologetics, you cannot have it both ways - you want the freedom to do whatever the hell you want but now you're pissed that everyone else has the some right, unimpeded. That's just like the hypocrisy you claim to hate.
nonetheless it is consequence of how quickly the scientific community changes it's mind on subject X.
Maybe I should just pull out the Donald Rumsfeld "knowns vs unknowns" soliloquy it seems fitting here.
So if a good friend of mine, who I know is not in cahoots with a crooked preacher (unfortunately yes it happens - really frustrating to me), receives a miraculous healing for bone spurs right in front of my eyes, confirmed by x-rays, does this count as God having an effect on the universe? While he was getting prayed for he said he felt a warm sensation in his heel, and all I know is he could not really walk without wincing in pain, and he left pain free. I guess that's just a strange coincidence though. This kind of stuff actually does happen fairly often, but again because of a few really bad choices by dudes like Peter Popoff, everything gets discredited.
exactly my point, there's also plenty of intelligent folk without post secondary education. I do regret not having some sometimes, but I've done just fine for myself without it as well.
Jesus had the goal of reconciling the world to God, period.
Yes, "the book" states that, the Jews were not able to "do it themselves" so they used fear to get Pilate to do it. I didn't mean to say the Jews literally did it, but rather than they were responsible for it, which is true.
They tried on numerous occasions and he'd always manage to escape. Read the books if you're going to talk about them.
But honestly guys, we could do this until the cows come home and it's draining. Fundamentally, this is a spiritual issue not an intellectual one, so you will always corner me in the end on an intellectual debate of this stuff. It's been fun.
So... did you get suckered by Jim and Tammy back in the 80's or something?
Yeah. Don't give those people money expecting the rainbows they promised. You'll only become a disappointed atheist with an abnormal obsession with religion.......oh wait... you probably know that - huh?
LOLOL When Black Sabbath got Ian Gillian to sing for them on the Born Again album, those bubbleheads actually though it meant "Born Again" and invited Ian Gillian to promote his album on their show.
Yeah. Back in the day, we'd hang with Sidney and watch them clowns. Most of the time we'd turn the sound down and play some sort of metal.
Y'all ever heard of Jimmy Swaggart? Well he's related to country and wester singer Mickey Gilley (think Urban Cowboy). Anyways, I used to get drunk once in a while with Keith Gilley, mickey Gilley's son and Jimmy Swaqggart's second cousin.
Screw Kevin Bacon. How many people does that make me away from God?
Which means he is present at, and witness to child abuse with the power to stop it.
Yet he chooses not too. Voluntarily allowing an innocent to suffer.
What kind of a bastard does that?
Either your God does NOT deserve worship, or your bible is wrong."
Lemme ask you something. When you see a cat going after a rat, do you stop it?
"Voluntarily allowing an innocent to suffer."
Like when he allows doctors to perform third trimester abortions?
You know you sound just like an evangelical preacher don't you?
"Either your God does NOT deserve worship, or your bible is wrong."
If you're an atheist, how do you know this? What great knowledge do you have that the rest of us don't?
If there is a God, then something tells me things are way more complex than the simplicity you're trying to make it be.
Jesus Christ Ms. Rose. My preacher Grand Pa told me I was basically unfit for salvation and I don't have anywhere near the attitude you do.
the what?
also similar as with racer if rumsfeld is your base you have none
prayer in medicine has been studied and all scientific studies into the subject have found that prayer has **** all effect on healing
then again you do show that you lack a significant bit of understanding about the history of the book you trust so much whcih is evidence of a lack of education on the subject
no jesus had the goal of reforming judaism to what he believed was the right way
theres plenty of scholars who agree on that
again read up on it theres plenty of scholars who have researched this and they agree on that those passages have no historical accuracy
Not by atheists or agnostics, no. Good luck being Gay in Uganda though. So your counter point enforces my view that there is a difference between Christianity (a religion) and a Christian (a sheep).
I believe you misunderstood my point but I understand that because I put my quotes in the wrong place and I don't think I made my point well, so I will try again.
You said you don't hold with these "splinter groups", the fact that the church has diverged into factions was a sign that something was wrong.
I was badly pointing out that Christianity is itself a splinter group from the Judaic faith.
If I was present at child abuse, witness to it, and had the power to stop it without fear of retribution, but I then failed to take action then I would have terrible difficulty living with myself. It simply would not happen, so I have to reject your counter point and state again that either your Bible is wrong, or your God does not deserve our worship because I refuse to believe that condoning the actions of child abuse should be worshiped.
I wanted to quote this and comment, simply so that there is something we can agree on. Further education is not a necessity in this world, in fact the way the system is setup in my country now it is simply a mechanism for starting everyone off in debt. That is a separate debate, but see - I only disagree with your bad points
EDIT PS: Please don't assume I am an atheist, I'm agnostic but I do categorically renounce the Abrahamic religions as false, and I've not taken enough drugs in recent times to be Hindi. I find the Church of Jedi to be non-offensive and generally acceptable although I don't believe in it and I've not learned much about the others except unified field theory which I regard as "interesting".
So the less violent and judgemental side is more true because they are less violent and judgemental?
Tim 4:1
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.
Tim 4:2
Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.
Tim 4:3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.
Where does it say anything about cherrypicking? It says stuff about *gasp* non-believers. Not about believers cherrypicking.
So why is creationism true but childwifes is not? As far as I understand there is not one single word in the whole book that says f****ng little children is wrong (unless it is adultery or about stealing)? Why do you believe in creationism but at the same I think you are sensible enough to not kill non-christians. Again why?
I don't think anybody who believes in whatever he believes is deluded. Psychiatric diseases do exist but I don't see believing in thousand year old books as one.
I doubt it. But then again I see stuff daily that your holy book is proven to be wrong about.
I think there is a sort of "better do something than nothing" psychological trap there. If your child is sick and someone says crossing your fingers and speaking to clouds makes things better you obviously think the person suggesting that is a moron. But at the same time it doesn't cost anything to cross your fingers. Instead of doing nothing you can feel like you are doing something. In the end the child sometimes survives and omg crossing my fingers worked! Power of prayer. Do nothing but feel like you are doing something. Makes you feel good about yourself, makes you feel like you are helping. Makes you feel like you are better person. The whole process is well understood in modern psychology.
I am absolutely confident in the evidence backed conclusion that should the Christian God exist then he is a pedophile voyeur.
I do not judge Christians for this, because being blind sided by faith is not a moral crime.
"You don't know Gods plans" is not an answer to the everyday scenario I posed about child abuse. It's an "I don't have an answer, so I am going to revert to my ingrained doublespeak as I've been taught to do". It's a failure to answer, and you would do well to give yourself the dignity of saying "I don't have an answer for your scenario, but I chose to continue to worship this evil child buggering bastard anyway because I chose to believe that if I do not then I will burn for eternity in mythological flames.". That would, at the very least, be a reasoned argument.
Uh... Yeah.
Think about it some. kick the tires. Drive it around.
To us, Child abuse is horrifying, we'd go nuts to stop it. But that's us. All we know is there's child abuse going on and that's it. We can't tell or even almost determine if the act is part of a much bigger play going on.
From our point of view it's simple child abuse.
From God's point of view? Who knows?
But reading the Bible or the Koran, there's all sorts of stories where massive battles happened, mindless, or seemingly mindless murders and assorted cruelty that had to happen for better things in the long run.
.....Thanks Sinbad, now you got me trying to play the Devil's advocate for God...
Great. If there's a God out there, I'm in trouble.
If god's plan includes child abuse then he is implicit in that action, thus negating his own existence. He would have to send himself to hell, if this is all part of his plan.
There are so many philosophical hypocrisies in organised religion its barely worth even starting to highlight them. The fact that religious people need the promise of heaven to reward their selfless behaviour or worship, thus making that selfless behaviour actually selfish, is one that I find amusing. Surely for someone to be truly selfless they can't be influenced by the word of god? Again, however all this is pointless to argue.
I happen to be agnostic, but I would hope any unfortunate person that happens to have suffered child abuse please read this please note - it is NOT god's plan. That's complete and utter bollocks.
Yes, we can easily say how stupid religion seems from our rational pulpits, there is nothing easier.
However, it is important to remember that all religions are interpreted by man, ( and for Becky, I mean that specifically ! )
When you have a limited male ruling class who want to retain power then religion has always been the weapon of choice as it's a good way to control the masses.
This does lead to a certain distortion of the original message, cuz of sex, power, and money. These are human traits and they tend to pollute the intended message of the teacher.
The question is, what is life, how did we get here, how was the planet, universe(s) created etc.
All sane, rational people know that the answer is 42.
Why, because you golgafinchens (sp) corrupted the program with bad data !
And the psychologists could see a loss of earnings if people actually knew the answer to that.
Women can't think, and therefor I am not one? Right...... *shakes head*
The sane and rational answer is that because the question cannot be answered you should therefor not conclude that you know the answer.
But the REAL question is: What do you get if you multiply six by nine?
To wit the answer is 42, not 54. Meaning that either the universe is base 13 and we've been adding up incorrectly all these years, or the universe is fundamentally broken.
More seriously though: The reason religions have creation myths is part of their justification. By claiming to know the answer to a question which cannot be answered they use this to position themselves as the masters of your soul. If this was something that had been answered then they would use a different question, perhaps we'd all be arguing the air speed of an unladen sparrow? I mean we know how quick a European Sparrow flies, but nobody ever worked out the air speed of an unladen African Sparrow...
What happened to the kids that made fun of Ezekiel?
What happened to the first born Egyptian sons?
What happened to every single descendant of Ham?
God...
Let's say there was an Almighty... Then if that's the case, it's not so much HOW the universe developed, but WHY.
Actually WHY the universe formed applies either way I guess.
That sounds like something the Catholic church would actually come up with. "God works in mysterious ways."
Cats chasing rats? You're suggesting, I infer, that God probably/possibly sees we humans in the same way we regard animals, but I still say your comparison is completely off.
The main way I think you're wrong to make that comparison is that "God" did not create cats in his own image. He apparently created Man in his own image. And I suggest that if you created, somehow, a species in your own image, it would be depraved and deplorable for you to stand by and allow the adults to molest and rape the infants, it would not be the same as cats chasing rats.
Ummm, no. Religions tend to be a system powerful men use to control the population. There are very few religions controlled by women. Therefore women tend to assume the role of property to prevent them coming into power.
Source; History.
And in my first post I said that no one knows the answer. This is simply a conversation about possibilities.
All this is actually explained by the guide;
“Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means.”
“Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise.”
And my preferred answer,
“There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
And I'm not offended by it, in fact I stated that I understand why it happens! Chill out!
how in the world does it not???
