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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
563633	2007-07-03 12:26:00	While I don't agree with his worldview I think in terms of religion Karl Marx had it right when he said: Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. In other words it is a fantasyland to which many love to escape to be able to bear the pressures of life, it has nothing or very little to do with reason. Nor do believers need solid scholarly or scientific proof to adhere to its path. It is a psychological sphere that offers a sense of security, identity and belonging. Which is why religion is simply not compatible with science, and rigorous scholarly investigation, though religionists often desperately try to prove otherwise. Hence, analogy of opium is quite appropriate, it is one of the strongest drugs around and anyone using it has distorted image of reality. Which is also why in order to understand the "truth" as they see it you have to take same drug i.e. become part of them. And once you are part of accepted crowd you can accept any variation in the "truth" no matter how distorted it might be or how frequently it might change. It's all simply accepted is as "mystery of god" regardless how illogical or devious it is.	Mackin_NZ (6958)
563634	2007-07-03 18:38:00	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??? I thank you for the insightful question and not just beating your chest and profiling . . . . I may not answer more questions, but I think yours is a good point . Let's take the statement you made here: 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 . The word "selection" leaves a lot to the imagination . If it truly is a selection . . then what are the selections? The premise that there are selections then makes the evolution factor gigantic by quantum numbers . Imagine parallel evolution and then selecting out from all the chances the best or most profitable ones? By your statement, there had to be vast numbers of mistakes and bad evolution too . If the "evolved" part is dysfunctional or not what is needed, then how any survivors will exist from the supposed litter of offspring (that will have to carry around an extra foot or head or whatever silly image I can create here) with that defect opens the door for even higher accidental chances . . but this time they had to be good and right and correct to pass on to progeny . "Accidental happenstance" is a pretty good term for it though . After all, you state that there is no divine control so everything has to be a catch-as-catch-can situation that leans very heavily upon odds and mistakes to make it work . No . . I prefer to believe in Divine creation as there are too many variables to need perfect happenstance to make a human or a fish or a protozoa . Until you mentioned selection, I wasn't attuned to that point to consider . The word isn't new . . . the concept of selection of "models" or "variations" if you will, is a new point that I see as vastly denigrating and hostile for evolution to work . I don't deny some adaption to environment and conditions under which animals and humans need to live or work . . and the mechanic's elbow was just a silly remark . . but I used it as a ploy to make the point that evolution needs to be profitable NOW, not next generation or even next week if you starve to death or cannot fly away or run faster than your pursuer . At some point there had to be only two of each type, (and that boggles the mind) so the loss of even one of them would have destroyed the passing on of genes and DNA . For evolution to work . . there has to be a serious lot of "accidents" that created chances and odds that are too far out of range to crunch . . . like eternal factors involved in the universe . Once you have successfully solved the life on earth problem, solve the earth-exists-in-a-universe problem too . No . . . I see the hand of a very good creator and the culmination of human life as the epitome of creation, but not in the condition in which we live today . People deny god as a handy way of not accepting responsibility for their lives and their false religions . . . . and face it . . NOT believing in god is a religion too! "Religion" breaks down to "relative (or surrounding oneself) "earth" or geos/gios from the Greek . So . . whatever beliefs you surround yourself with acts as a religion by definition . I feel sad that people are charismatically beat about with lies and deceit from the very institutions that are supposed to be the watershed of god's love and devotion . Good for you that you can see through all that hype! God does not watch you trying to destroy you or punish you for eternity if you mess up . . . no matter what a "church" might say . He's not a "gotcha" type god like the demons of ancient Rome and Greek philosophies or "indigenous persons" tribal Kachinas or doll-gods seeking to fool you into submission with promises of wandering the heavens or underworld looking for your hidden soul . The fires of hell are man-made . . can you imagine a worse condition to live in for eternity? Fire is the single most devastating and painful experiences a human can imagine . . especially if it last forever . That's a priest's role . . to confuse, misdirect and scare the beejeezus outta their flocks . I am sorry for all those who have seen the nasty meanness of the churches and the throttling to their constituents with lies and sanctimonious hierarchy . No wonder the churches are dying as the members find out they are dead man's graves, all clean and whitewashed on the outside and full of the bones of dead men inside . I quote Red Green again here: "All through civilization's history, man has sought food, shelter, clothing, sex and alcoholic beverages" . Too bad they don't see that these things also exist with a belief in god too .	SurferJoe46 (51)
563635	2007-07-03 21:23:00	I would suggest that we are all attached to our ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . That is,if we have any!	Cicero (40)
563636	2007-07-03 23:01:00	surely the odds of you and I being here are billions to oneIn fact, the odds are zero to one without an intelligent creator.	Greg (193)
563637	2007-07-03 23:13:00	Are we allowed to post links to google video? i have an excellent video...	rob_on_guitar (4196)
563638	2007-07-04 00:05:00	In fact, the odds are zero to one without an intelligent creator. At last,one who knows for sure. All future reference to Greg please.	Cicero (40)
563639	2007-07-04 00:30:00	Religion has not made the world peaceful . Yup . . you are SO right! Religion is the problem . . it's what's done in the name of god and thru the auspices of religion that has it's own agenda of greed and avarice and hate mongering . As the self-professed vicars of Christ, they say they have the ear and mouth of God and therefor the sheep must follow . It's all smoke and mirrors . They fool a lot of people . God is sorely misrepresented by those who should and likely do know better . They thump the bible and praise themselves and say they are pillars of piety . . and they rape, kill and maim in the same venue . Glad you said that . If you know any religion that does those things . . rapes, kills and maims, then get away from it . . it's wrong .	SurferJoe46 (51)
563640	2007-07-04 00:37:00	I wasn't going to post any more in this thread but the arrogance of SurferJoe's last post changed my mind. Some of what follows may make "True Believers" like Joe uncomfortable. Tough cookies. The truth has a way of doing that for people who are blinded by lies. For the benefit of SurferJoe the "Bible" quotes are taken from the "New World Translation", the version Jehovah's Witness's have edited to agree with Watchtower teachings. "Now this is the basis for judgment, that the light has come into the world but men have loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were wicked". - John 3:19 One doesn't have to believe in the veracity of the Bible to accept the above statement from John. Wicked people have always preferred darkness over light or truth. Just look at how people like Sadaam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin and the Catholic Church operated and you'll see what I mean. When one has invested one's entire life, future life and eternal destiny solely on the words of a book, what is wrong with investigating those words to see if they are true or not? Nothing. If a God chose to give his earthly children a book that would be their sole guide to happiness and salvation, one would expect that book to be full of nothing but clear-cut rules and examples designed to show people the path to that happiness and salvation. Instead, the Bible is full of stories that have no application or meaning in anyone's life. While some history of God's so-called "chosen" people might be helpful in understanding why God gave certain laws, most of the Bible's history is worthless, rambling narrative that has no application to anyone other than those who lived during those times. Would you put your trust in a book where most of the books within it were written by anonymous writers? There are some pretty heavy duty miracles described in the Bible, but hardly anyone stepped forward to identify themselves as witnesses to those miracles. Moses was allegedly a witness to a bunch of spectacular miracles, yet he never admitted his authorship to any book. None of the four gospel's writers identified themselves, either. Why? Many True Believers insist that because the Bible is such an ancient book and has survived through the ages, that alone should be sufficient proof of it's veracity. I argue the opposite: by nature of it's very age, and by nature of what was known by man during those ancient times, it makes the Bible even more questionable. Here's an example: "Accordingly the sun kept motionless, and the moon did stand still, until the nation could take vengeance on its enemies. Is it not written in the book of Ja'shar? And the sun kept standing still in the middle of the heavens and did not hasten to set for about a whole day. And no day has proved to be like that one, either before it or after it, in that Jehovah listened to the voice of a man, for Jehovah himself was fighting for Israel". - Joshua 10:13-14 There is nothing in this narrative to suggest these verses were not what actually (supposedly) happened. There are three fatal flaws here. First, keeping the sun still for a day would not prevent darkness. It's the rotation of the earth that causes light and darkness. This shows that the writer believed the sun revolved around the earth. Such a belief was common in those days. Second, if God actually stopped the rotation of the earth, the entire world would have noticed it, for they would either have 24 hours of the same darkness, light, or dusk. Yet NO other reliable person on this planet at that time documented such an event. Third, Joshua is supposed to have written the book that bears his name (yet he himself claims no authorship). If so, why is he speaking in the past tense about the FUTURE? He states that "no day has proved to be like that one, either before it or after it". He nowhere makes claim of authorship of this book, and he nowhere claims that this special knowledge of speaking about the future in the past tense is because of any divine revelation. The whole story stinks and any logical person would have to conclude it is a fable made up long after the supposed event. One of the advantages of doing this is that all the eyewitnesses to the event are dead, and one can say anything one wants, claim it is of Divine origin and get away with it. Also, one would have to wonder why God would radically change the laws of physics that HE CREATED to make this event happen. Why couldn't he just have tossed down a bunch of flashlights to the Israelites, instead? Why did he have to screw up the entire earth for a day so the Israelites could fight one of their numerous stupid little battles? But there are many, MANY such idiotic stories in the Bible, and I will illustrate a few more. Take the story of Jonah, for example. The story is fabulous. (The word "fabulous" in the 18th century meant the same as the phrase "crock of sh!t" means today.) God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the people God is pissed off because they are somehow "wicked". Since when did God decide to start messing in the affairs of "heathen" Gentiles who were minding their own business? Jonah, being the low-life coward that he was, runs away from the job and hitches a ride on a merchant ship. God is now pissed that Jonah is such a coward, so he makes a huge wind that is so dangerous the crew had to throw their cargo overboard. In the meantime Jonah is "sleeping" through this all! What a retard! The crew discovers that Jonah is the cause of the mess they're in and decide not to kill Jonah for his evil deed, but put him overboard. Any self-respecting Jew of the day would have immediately hacked to pieces any Gentile who put them in a like mess. But NO! These "pagan" Gentiles showed mercy and compassion and saved Jonah's life, even though they still faced death or at the very least suffered for all their time and work by having to unload their cargo. So, God gets a big fish to swallow Jonah and then heave him up in three days. And who else witnessed this event? NO ONE! We only have Jonah's word for it, yet the account itself shows Jonah to be a self-serving coward. Who would believe such a fabulous (read: "crock of sh!t") story as that, given the evidence? If God had wanted to show his power and fully convince people of that power with a real miracle, he should have had JONAH SWALLOW that monstrous fish and then have HIM heave up the fish in front of a whole bunch of people. Now THAT would be a real miracle, and there would be eyewitnesses to it, unlike Jonah's own story. Jonah then goes to Nineveh and hurls his invective at them. Nineveh repents. Shouldn't Jonah be thrilled that because of his mission, an entire city was spared God's wrath? NO. He's PISSED about it. He's so mad, he tells God to kill him. God doesn't kill him. God should have killed that vindictive nitwit. Even after that, he hangs around hoping that Nineveh will go back to their wicked ways, so they will all be killed. Jonah was a dick. Therefore, nothing he says can be trusted. If the story of Jonah can't be trusted and the story of the sun standing still can't be trusted, then ALL of the Bible is suspect. Unless the Almighty is a weak and puny God, it would not be unreasonable for him to keep his own road-map to happiness and salvation from being so corrupted. Then there is the story of Samson. Delilah tricks him into telling her the secret of his great strength. Because Samson is so effective at killing the Philistines, it was a major coup for Delilah to know how to take away that strength. By the way, modern historians are mostly in agreement that the Philistines were one of the most civilized nations on earth at that time, and not the bloodthirsty cretins the Bible describes. Samson had never cut his hair before this. It therefore was LOOOOOONG hair. Hair grows about a half inch per month. Samson therefore must have been in prison a very long time for his hair to have grown to any length. Now, since the Philistines knew that if his hair grew back, he would get his strength back and kill all of them. This begs the question, why in-the-hell didn't they bother to keep his hair SHAVED OFF? What kind of morons were they, anyway? If you had some guy locked up, who could rip the jail door off and squash you like a bug, wouldn't you take a few minutes every so-often and shave his damn HEAD? I would! Don't try to argue that God made Samson's hair grow long overnight, for that will hurt your case even more. Why would God use miracle hair growth when Samson didn't even need to have long hair in the first place for God to give him superhuman strength? That's like arguing that God suspended all the laws of physics that HE CREATED to make it rain long and hard enough to cover the entire earth and all its mountains, when all he had to do was vaporize everyone with a wave of his hand. Clean, neat, simple. One final example. "Now these are the kings who reigned in the land of E'dom before any king reigned over the sons of Israel". - Genesis 36:31 See the problem with this verse? Moses is considered to be the writer of Genesis by both Christians and Jews. There weren't any kings of Israel until the time of Saul, so that is the absolute earliest this verse could have been written. The Jehovah's Witness publication "Aid to Bible Understanding" on page 335 puts the Beginning of Saul's reign at 1117 B.C. It puts the entry of the Israelites into Canaan in 1473 B.C, and Moses was already DEAD when that event happened. That means this verses was written at LEAST 353 years after the death of Moses. When you have fabulous (read: "crock of sh!t") fables like this and fabulous (read: "crock of sh!t") anachronisms like this in a book that claims to be God's very own word and you put your whole life in trust and your eternal salvation and trust in such a book, you are as foolish as these stories.	Mackin_NZ (6958)
563641	2007-07-04 00:43:00	If you know any religion that does those things..rapes, kills and maims, then get away from it..it's wrong. How about Jehovah's Witnesses for one!!! They are rife with pedophiles in positions of authority who are often protected from the authorities. They murder their children by refusing blood transfusions. They require their followers to shun former members, even family members, who have broken some man-made Watchtower rule. Hypocrites.	Mackin_NZ (6958)
563642	2007-07-04 00:57:00	God's cool, it's his fan clubs I have a problem with. The attitude that says "I believe therefore I am better than you" yeah well I believe rain is wet and the sky looks blue and if you want to know why the sky is blue then turn to science. The belief that the sky is blue is good enough for most people, they don't have to prove it.	JackStraw (6573)
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