from the BBC

Quote :

"Spirituality and discipleship officer Rev Jenny Ellis said: "This campaign will be a good thing if it gets people to engage with the deepest questions of life."

She added: "Christianity is for people who aren't afraid to think about life and meaning." "

NO christianity and religion IS for people who are afraid to think about life and meaning, NOT the other way around! Religion literally offers a quick and easy answer to the questions and fears people have.

It takes someone WITHOUT FEAR to understand WHY people believe in religion and what makes everything tick. Fear is the driving force behind religion. Last time I checked the consequence of not being Christian is eternity of damnation. You can't understand life and meaning if your in fear of that!!

Without FEAR there is NO religion!

Anyway, I don't think a bendy bus is going to make one bit of difference! it's laughable!

exactly - religion teaches you to not question anything, so the immediate conclusion you come to if you don't know why something happened is 'god did it'

What I think there something is important though that scientists slip up on occassionaly -

To dismiss the concept of intelligent design is not something that should be laughed at. The whole concept of religion, and it's customs designed to control large masses of people, yes that can be somewhat dismissed.

BUT the fundemental idea that we are designed by a force we do not yet understand can't be dismissed. If someone is truly SCIENTIFIC you need to be completely open and free from bias.

Even though I believe it to be highly unlikely it can't be ignored completely. I think the concept of 'religion' is however man made, and a tool to create fear and control.

OMG! :yikes: You lot are in sooooo much trouble! Fatwahs will be flying around like nobody's business. I'm gettin' outta here. :auto:

Quote :

arrived in the year Zero, apparently

6AD. The whole Bethlehem story thingy starts a bit earlier than when Jesus pops out. I forget the month he was born now, June I think. The whole December thing came later to appease the Pagans who refused to give up Yuletide.

Quote :

To dismiss the concept of intelligent design is not something that should be laughed at.

Religion needs to stop attacking science to justify itself, it feels threatened, but it is silly. Even if the LHC finds the Higgs Boson that could, in the wierdo nutcase view of the world, explain the mechanism that their God used to make the garden of eden 6000 years ago after the dinosaurs where made extinct.

I'll leave the date problem to the philosophers, the point i'm raising is science does not attempt to answer 'why', it answers 'how', and it's about damn time religious fruitcakes stoped spouting off about how evil it is to find the answers of the universe that are slowly disproving their religion by raising general standards of enducation to a level sufficient for the masses to start having enough braincells to question whether all this religious crap their being taught from childhood actually makes sence.

EDIT: What is not acceptable, in any reasonable sense, is to make up stories of why the universe exists and then impose those stories on uneducated people. This is the mechanism by which religion has spread, the stories being miss-interpretations of stories long since forgotten in their original context and dawning from a time when the educational standard of the masses was somewhat less than an infant in todays society. Relgion should not be tolerated.

Quote from Intrepid :

from the BBC


NO christianity and religion IS for people who are afraid to think about life and meaning, NOT the other way around! Religion literally offers a quick and easy answer to the questions and fears people have.

It takes someone WITHOUT FEAR to understand WHY people believe in religion and what makes everything tick. Fear is the driving force behind religion. Last time I checked the consequence of not being Christian is eternity of damnation. You can't understand life and meaning if your in fear of that!!

Without FEAR there is NO religion!

Anyway, I don't think a bendy bus is going to make one bit of difference! it's laughable!

Y'know the bolded/underlined/italiced bit's very true. Alot of these bible bashers (as I shall call them) often say that they aren't afraid of death because God will welcome them into heaven. I've seen/read many articles about 'coming' to Christianity, that when you die God will welcome you into Heaven and things.

I'll be honest. For a while now every day I wake up, I'm prepared to die. Die for my freind. Die for my girl. Die for my family.

If it's my day to die - It's my day to die. If, when I die, I end up in a cool place as a floaty ghost - Cool!

If it's just black or whatever then that's what it is. You can't deny the inevitable.

Alot of Christianity (and most, if not all religions, in fact) are run on fear, that your God will smite you and cut off your testicles if you have sex with a woman (or man, whatever takes your fancy) that you love before getting married. Perhaps you are in your late teens / early 20's and can't afford and/or aren't ready for marridge.

This is just one of many pieces of bullshit religion imposes on alot of otherwise happy people.

Quote from Intrepid :

BUT the fundemental idea that we are designed by a force we do not yet understand can't be dismissed.

yes it can because by very definition it cannot be science

Science has it's unproven theories too Shotglass, although in fairness, the are presented as theories not fact and for the purpose of proving or disproving them rather than cajoling you into acting a certain way.

Totally. Any scientist (or even a layman, unskilled science-nerd) will be the first to tell you that science doesn't know everything, doesn't claim to know everything and doesn't even claim that science will or even CAN know everything. Even when something is basically accepted as a "fact" (such as gravity or evolution), it's still called a "Theory" because science accepts that it might have missed something (even if that's highly unlikely - but that's why you don't just perform experiments just once).

I think there's a misconception of science causes a lot of confusion among some religious people. They have an absolute, clear-cut idea of how everything began and scriptures that tell them exactly what to do, what to think, what to wear, eat, how to have sex and with whom among other things; therefore they think science is the same: a rigid & dogmatic set of instructions on a par with their religion. Some even talk about "the religion of science". Nothing could be further from the truth. Science, at any given point in history, is humanity's best guess (for want of a better word) at objective fact, given the observations & evidence available. That's it. Some guesses are obviously better than others and get incorporated into our body of knowledge, while the ones that aren't that great are discarded.

There's a fundamental difference between most religions and science: putting it simply, science is happy to admit when it's wrong about something and take on new evidence because that adds to the body of knowledge. Religion starts out "knowing" everything already, often attempting through mad mental contortions to incorporate new knowledge into its ever-more incompatible philosophical worldview. Change in religion is slow, often reluctant and often violently opposed; change in science is rapid & dynamic - change in science is basically the norm.

Religion tells you what to think,
Science teaches you how.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Science has it's unproven theories too Shotglass, although in fairness, the are presented as theories not fact and for the purpose of proving or disproving them rather than cajoling you into acting a certain way.

yes but to be scientific it has to offer reproduceable testable predictions which as far as i can tell religion falls flat on its face on

to be fair i came on a bit strong and for once i agree with him that you cant outright dismiss the philosophical concept... however it has nothing to do with being scientific as he put it (also he was being a cock again and using caps)

Quote from Shotglass :

to be fair i came on a bit strong

*whistles innocently whilst dancing naked around a pentagon with other herratics*

I had to smile when I saw that news article yesterday. You can't move for getting told how great Jesus is on public transport these days, so it's nice to hear the counterpoint.

I believe you should either get all sides of an argument or you get none. So if you can have Xtian ads saying how great Jesus is (and round here they are everywhere), it's only fair that the opposing argument is put forward as well. That's called 'freedom of choice'.

I still believe that if there is some heavenly body or bodies looking down at us, their primary goal is for us to be happy and decent human beings. Demanding that we worship them makes them egotistic and therefor fallible, denying their own perfection. No 'forgiving' and 'benevolent' deity is going to punish you for living your life as a good person, irrelevant of what particular system they belong to.

</sermon>

i like it how people talk about religion without ever studying them and i like it how atheists say that religion holds people back relating to civilization and scientific progress.

now this is a thread that lerts should get involved with

Seems like God and buses have a lot in common - You wait 500yrs for one, then 3 turn up at the same time.

Quote from Becky Rose :

*whistles innocently whilst dancing naked around a pentagon with other herratics*

I thought it's "heretic". :P

And I'd use a pentagram, mind you, not a mere pentagon. Unless you mean THE pentagon. Seeing a lot of naked lesbians dancing around in Washington has a certain appeal

Concerning religion: it once served a purpose. It explained things unexplainable in the past, and it gave people a moralic framework to live by. Of course, with modern science and ethics, the very concept of any religion is obsolete.

And to conclude my post, a fun fact about christianity: While monogamy wasn't a new idea back when christianity got a kickstart in the 4th century, as the romans and greeks both practizised it. What christianity brought into it was the "until death do us apart" thing. Divorce was quite common and acceptable back then.
Also, imagine rome being a filth filled stinkhole cramped with a million or two pisspoor people.
Knowing this, the "lifelong" marital sentence and the "no premarital sex" and "only have sex for procreation" rules hadn't actually anything to do with being a good christian. In fact, the ruling christian class thought the world was overpopulated back then and those were means to make people have less children. In fact, if it were for the christian superiors, people shouldn't have sex at all.
But it also did a good thing back then, allthough it sounds quite cynical with todays standards in mind: in ancient rome, only the patriarchs counted, meaning that a family relation could only be between men with women only being vessels to give birth to them. Christianity though regarded mothers as, if not more important as fathers, making both males and females important in ancestry. Thus, it was actually striving for more female rights. It also introduced the concept of an "extended" family with no blood bonds, with the whole mother/father-in-law business.

What gets my back up, is some of these people that claim to be religious, spend Sunday morning praying in church / mosque / garden shed, then the rest of the week breaking all of the so called rules that their bible has laid down for them. But that's OK, because they then claim that "oh, you aren't supposed to take it LITERALLY". Until of course it suits them. Most religion is so full of hypocrisy, it's no wonder so many people have a distaste for it.

Personally, I don't understand how someone can base their life around a book that provides no evidence for it's source and that was written x thousand years ago, and assume that it's relevant in today's society.

Quote from dawguk :

Most religion is so full of hypocrisy, it's no wonder so many people have a distaste for it.

you mean most religious people are full of hypocrisy.

Quote from dawguk :

Personally, I don't understand how someone can base their life around a book that provides no evidence for it's source and that was written x thousand years ago, and assume that it's relevant in today's society.

that's why it's called belief and not knowledge. You can't have proof for the existence of god. That would take away the meaning of believing in his existence. Plus, talking about the existence of god needs to take into consideration the meaning of existence itself.

Quote from ColeusRattus :

Concerning religion: it once served a purpose. It explained things unexplainable in the past, and it gave people a moralic framework to live by. Of course, with modern science and ethics, the very concept of any religion is obsolete.

What the hell does science have to do with religion?


Why do still people confuse the purpose of each one of those things? Morality reached very high grounds in classical greece and great scientific progress was made, yet people knew how to distinguish the two and religion was tightly woven into their lives.

George, religion has EVERYTHING to do with science, as religion developed because people didn't understand the world around them and tried to find answers why we are here and how it all works.
Nowadays, these questions are answered by science.

Just take for example, a river. Why does it flow towards the sea? In the olden days, people explained it by river dieties commanding it to do so. Today, we know that gravity is the cause of that.

And concerning ancient greece, while scientifically and philosophically advanced, they lacked the means to question the very fabric of their religion. It didn't dawned on them that Gaia (the earth) giving birth to Uranos (the sky) and concieved children with him wasn't the most likely way we spawned to existance.
Also, greek mythology is full of dieties, nymphs, fauns, titants, gigants, and so on which were personifications of natural phenomena they didn't understand back then.

also, a very good read on the subject: http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

im agnostic too but i dont believe in a god that allows so much sickness

thats why i conclude if god exists this evil world is staged

but i give it a chance of this of 0.00000000000001%

but i will never belive in the bible vengative god

Quote from ColeusRattus :

people explained it by river dieties commanding it to do so. Today, we know that gravity is the cause of that.

and here i can tell you that you don't have a very good grasp on what science is... go read Feyman for a while, see what he has to say about birds and their names. Seriously.

Quote from ColeusRattus :

while scientifically and philosophically advanced, they lacked the means

whoa. they lacked the means? you sure about that? i think they had the means all right... After all, they were philosophically advanced.

Quote from ColeusRattus :

to question the very fabric of their religion.

They didn't want to. They weren't interested in that. That was their religion, not their subject of scientific interest. They made progress and added on their knowledge. When they found out things that contradicted their beliefs, the beliefs became secondary. Their religious beliefs didn't hinder them at all in their scientific progress. Unless you know something i don't. (did you check out my flag?:shy

Wait wait wait.. You can't debate without the spaghetti monster.

"Every religion is wrong. Spaghetti monster is the way to go. Why? Because I 'believe' in it. And you can't change my mind. Haha you lose, I win. "

p.s. flavoured with a pinch of sarcasm.

I know that you are greek

Also, I rather like myself to think I have a certain grasp of how science works (allthough I despise writing scientifical papers).

And while the greek were philosophically advanced, they still didn't have telescopes, microscopes and other means to get literally new points of view on the world, they were restricted to their five senses, thus the DO lacked means scientists have today.

And concerning the religiosity: well, the philosophers (or at least some of them) ranked religion second or not at all, like they do today, but the people, also much like today, weren't too fond of new things that would alter their perception of the world.

Also, it's actually not science deliberately trying to disprove religion, it's rather the other way round. If something is discovered that might compromise religion, it is immediately attacked by religious fanatics.
You see, the problem with religion is that for it to work, it requires to have the absolute truth. Science on the other hand knows that absolute truth may be something that will never be achieved and every theory is open for debate, emnaing that if a better model comes along, it'll get used instead of the older one.

Quote :

you mean most religious people are full of hypocrisy.

Actually no he's right, there are sufficient contradictions in all of the holy works for them to fairly and reasonably be considered utter hypocracy. That's why there are so many flavours of Christianity, as new interpretations have periodically been created by splinter groups who didn't like a few bits and wanted to start over and impose their own world view on the old works of fiction.

Quote :

You can't have proof for the existence of god. That would take away the meaning of believing in his existence.

Absolutely not, proof of God does not deny he exists. Proof, should there be any, would surely be a great way to draw in new converts and earn more money for the church, I guarantee that should proof be found the churches would be over it like maggots to an apple. The problem is, there isnt any. There is absolutely no justifyable reason at all why anyone would believe in a God - other than the need to believe that their life isn't pointless by failing to justify their own existence in a more reasonable way.

If the purpose of God is to be believed without evidence that would make the purpose of God to breed fools. There is no, religious scientific or otherwise, reason why evidence of God would be a bad thing, indeed, in America there is a 'scientific' institute whose goal it is to find actual evidence of God. So far they have focused more on poor interpretations of aethiest arguments in a sort of corporate game of internet forum bitch slapping, they even think they've won - just like a forum troll staring defeat in the face.

The purpose of religion is to propogate itself, much like a virus.

Unfortunately, a cloud shaped a bit like the face of Jesus is still just a cloud shaped a bit like the face of Jesus. It is not proof.

Quote :

Plus, talking about the existence of god needs to take into consideration the meaning of existence itself.

Why does religion seek to explain why the universe exists with no evidence, proof, or basis for it's creationism fairy tales? The creationist stories of the old religions are pure flights of fantasy and a herrasy upon intelligent thought. Anybody uttering them as fact should be condemned and not allowed near children.

i feel like i am talking to people that have an opposite meaning of everything. Thus, i will quietly stop taking part in this discussion.