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Thread ID: 80551	2007-06-27 07:47:00	Science or Religion? What do you believe?	radium (8645)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
563623	2007-07-03 05:00:00	I cannot say whether a God exists, I can neither prove or disprove it, simply I do not know beyond any reasonable doubt. However, I am vain enough to believe my life and that of my family and fellows does have some purpose, that might not always seem very clear, and that our existence as a species is more than an just accident of nature. You see, there's some more confused thinking on cause and effect. If life is an accident of nature therefore life has no meaning. I want life to have meaning, therefore I cannot believe it is an accident. Say what? Why -- why oh why -- does one have to follow the other. Why does human life have to have "no meaning" if no supreme being is involved. We make our own damn worth, and create our own meaning and DO NOT need a supreme being's design to validate our existance. Why oh why do people feel the need to create their own master. No wonder dogs are suppoosed to be man's best friend - people see in their relationship to a dog a mirror of their relationship to their god. Me. I've always liked cats.	Biggles (121)
563624	2007-07-03 05:05:00	Part of the evolution, unfortunately there were a fair few victims along the way- plenty of fanatics on all sides, and fanatics are not known for their tolerance of dissenting views. The Northern Irish are a good modern example- harbouring grudges for over 300 years, and very few can rationalise the problem, and that problem which re-emerged in 1969, has still not been really solved. The Irish individually are charming people, on both sides of the religious divide, just avoid mention of the "troubles" or getting partisan. The Serbs are anther tolerant group in their own land as long as one agrees with them.	KenESmith (6287)
563625	2007-07-03 07:44:00	"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." "There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?" "Science offers us an explanation of how complexity arose out of simplicity. The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain." Richard Dawkins	radium (8645)
563626	2007-07-03 07:49:00	OK . . . I lurked here for a while to see if there were gonna be flames and arrows, and maybe my comments will incite some . . but here goes anyway: It seems that there has to be a common ground for any point to be considered, and since most who have posted here have gone to the side of there being no god, then it is behooving upon me to go the other way . I have faith that god exists . . . there is proof that some will decry and some might even think very little about, but proof of the existence of god should be contingent upon the authenticity of the book that is purported to be from his inspiration . . right? Is the Bible the word of god? I say so . I offer that it was written a long time ago . . it is not a modern book, at least not the "Old Testament" or the Hebrew texts anyway . Everyone here seems to think that the bible is old . . so we leave it at that for now . Most people here have alluded the fact that they believe it was fairy tales and superstitious stories in the bible used to explain the creation and subsequent life forms that exist today . These so-called tales are also accepted as antique in age by posters here who also deny the existence of god . . . some even said these fables show up in other cultures as a silly way of explaining rather complex events and cycles in the activities of god and his creation . If the age of the book is not suspect, then I offer that it has been a revelation that even the stoutest deny-ist can't answer . The age of the Bible may be suspect by most here, although not by me, but it can be said in agreement that it was transcribed many times by many authors and writers who just copied the text as it was quoted . I agree, but then I also believe in divine direction and inspiration to write these books and rules from god . So . . the authenticity and accuracy of the text is poohed and dissed as illogical and just not the scientific way of enlightened people . Now a little fun: Let's take for instance the common dialog in the early times that the earth was flat . . there are some today who even argue it for fun . . they cannot be serious! What does the Bible say? Job, who lived quite a few generations ago said this: " . . that God hung the earth upon nothing", when the "correct" idea of the time was that it was being carried on the backs of four elephants that were in turn riding on a giant turtle . Job must have had someone tip him off about the nothingness . All this before space travel and satellites and such . Who hung the earth? . . . where? . . . on what? From Isaiah 40:22 . . . “There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers . ” From Job 26:7-10 . . . . "He is stretching out the north over the empty place, Hanging the earth upon nothing; 8 Wrapping up the waters in his clouds, So that the cloud mass is not split under them; 9 Enclosing the face of the throne, Spreading out over it his cloud . AND GET THIS PART: 10 He has described a circle upon the face of the waters, To where light ends in darkness . " Does that set of verses not indicate that the earth was round and even had a circular shaped umbra on the sun-lighted side? Who told Job these things? Where did the bible get these ideas? If the common ideas were that there was something other than god running the show, then why doesn't the bible reflect that notion instead of flying in the face of "intelligence" and scientific proof? Remember that most here said that those people of olde were stupid and non-educate to things that are scientifically known today . . so where'd this idea come from? It was, like I said common scientific knowledge that the earth was flat! Yet the bible said it was round! Why . . the blasphemy! So much for scientific proof! I contend that even Columbus read the bible (he was an elitist anyway and had a copy of the bible which was forbidden to the common man by the Catholic Church . . remember these guys just recently accepted the fact that the universe was helio-centric!) and knew that the world was round . The days of Columbus were rife with superstition and monsters and demons in every aspect of life, yet he went to find a shortcut to the other side of the China . . a little wrong in calculations, but he proved that the earth wasn't flat anyway . There are shameful, disgusting things done in the name of god, and keeping the truth of the scriptures away from the common man has been a single most heinous crime of blood guilt responsibility of the churches of the world . Taking creation from god is one of their crimes, and I understand why people are fed up with what the churches teach . . . it's all apostasy! To keep god from being accessed by the common man and alluding that it is only by the priesthood that one can approach god is a very serious crime against god . Involving science, which in itself is good and beneficial, over the creation of the earth and the universe is just short-sighted and mean . Telling someone that there's a god who sends you to a fiery hell for disobedience is just scare tactics . If any of you have children, would you send them to eternal burning punishment for sins against you? Not very likely . . and a righteous god would not do so either . Where would the mercy of god be? Where would YOUR mercy be? Telling people that there is no god is like having a pediatrician believe that babies are delivered by a stork . . and that was a scientific theory at one time too . Take this from my professor Carl Hubbs, co-authored writer/scientist/biologist from SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY (http://sio . ucsd . edu/): "Evolution, for it to work, has to be of immediate influence and usefulness by the creature of the moment . If the evolution of something to a better design or more useful function to the creature isn't going to be used by the parent of the next offspring, then there will likely not be offspring for it to do any good . " Makes sense, no? Parents cannot pass on evolved changes if they fail to produce offspring because they die defective or incapable of immediate evolution . Evolution does not work . If it did . . mechanics would have a second elbow about 1/2 way between the current one and their wrist . I needed one several times and it never showed up! Maybe some of my next generation will have one there . . . . . . . . . huh . . . . . . whatta you think evolutionists? In 1960, it was common science prognostication that foretold that we'd have abundant and even free electricity from nuclear generation because it was so easy to make that it would be by now of small value anyway and would be a free service delivered by our countries and governments . We were told that sickness and disease would be cured by the early 2000's and that there'd be immortality for everyone because of science and it's ministrations . I don't know about you, but I never saw that turtle and the elephants under the earth from any of the space shots reporting such when they returned to earth . I never noticed the loss of huge numbers of ships as they fell off the end of the earth . I still pay for electricity and energy . I still see people dying of cancer and other diseases . Science has answered the challenge for technology and lifestyle improvements, but it has not added one iota of time or a cure to the "human condition" . . . which is NOT the way we are supposed to live anyway . Scientists have found that there is indeed discontinuity between the different ‘kinds,’ and, except for the question of origin, this has been the chief obstacle to the theory of evolution . To believe that I am the end result of billions and billions of accidents in the primordial ooze from electrical discharges that accidentally created chemical substances that accidentally created amino acids that weren't dissolved by the water in which they lived and evolved and then accidentally created nerves, accidentally became warm-blooded and got accidental spinal cords and brains and eyespots and then accidentally grew fins and then accidentally crawled out of the ooze and developed lungs and accidentally bruised a fin and that accidentally turned into a wing and that accidentally gave birth to flight and then that accidentally grew legs and then accidentally stood upright and grew hair and somehow developed stereo vision and hearing and then became man . . then had to be accidentally created all over again to make a female . . well . . I find that a hard to swallow . . . . . but there's always the stork theory to fall back to if you want . At this point, I am not going to badger, be badgered or enter into devolved theories of evolution nor of the substance of my beliefs . If you don't like it . . . so be it but I am not going to be bashed and debated . This is MY belief, my words except for the bible quotes and the stuff my biology professor told me and I am not going to change it for anybody .	SurferJoe46 (51)
563627	2007-07-03 08:50:00	I think a lot of people have been waiting for you to post your views here. Glad you are participating :thumbs: I'm not going to pick through your post or badger you. but just a couple of things. I don't now why Religious believers throw the word accidentally around. I don't know why people can't understand natural selection, and surely the odds of you and I being here are billions to one. Something that is easy to understand, and not a complex theory like people think it is. Why do people also think that the proof of evolution not existing is that why aren’t we seeing things change like your mechanics elbow. Why not? Because evolution takes billions of years to evolve not in our lifetime are we going to see changes.For a mechanic to have extra elbows surely generations upon generations of his family would have to be mechanics for anything to form. Creationism & intelligent Design raise bigger questions. Like Created the Creator???	radium (8645)
563628	2007-07-03 08:52:00	Surfer as mentioned earlier my father quoted three contradictions from the bible so how many more are there. The bible was put together by man over many generations so a lot of what was originally intended will have been lost so I personally am going to take it all with a grain of salt.	mikebartnz (21)
563629	2007-07-03 09:01:00	Religion has not made the world peaceful.	Elvito (11727)
563630	2007-07-03 09:21:00	Religion has not made the world peaceful. It sure hasn't. It has created more War than Peace.	radium (8645)
563631	2007-07-03 11:54:00	Thank you lord for the wisdom arrising from this post.	Cicero (40)
563632	2007-07-03 12:09:00	Ho hum, the resident Jehovah's Witness churns out the same old tired Watchtower rhetoric I heard for so much of my life. It's still full of the same lies, half-truths, mis-quotes and holes it ever was. This is MY belief, my words ... and I am not going to change it for anybody. Pity your religion has closed your mind. With such an attitude there's no point in discussing your post.	Mackin_NZ (6958)
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