OT: The religion thead...

[free_electron]

"only God acts without making any mistakes."

I dare say: he/she/it, if existing,  screwed up really bad when creating the human species...  look at all the crap the human race does. Pollution , religious wars , killing each other over a piece of 'bling'... a couple of extra lines of 'checking code' in the human brain kernel could have prevented a whole slew of problems, without impeding on 'free choice'.

If i were god and someone would slander my name in such ways like the religious warmongers do with their 'in god's name' ....... i'd fire a bolt of lightning up their ass.

Anyway. this is not a discussion about philisophy or religion. there are forums dedicated to that ...

[A Hellene]

I could not agree more with that assessment...


-George

[robrenz]

Amen!

[EEVblog]

God cannot "screw up". This is man follwing his carnal desires - desires that are of the flesh, not of the spirit of God - (the Holy Spirit). It is not possible for God to be of ANYTHING except love and perfection - he is Holy, and WE screw up, because we reject him, and satan sees his opportunity and grabs it, because we are weak... rebellious... selfish... arrogant, and defiant... but God STILL loves us, regardless. You could go out and kill someone, rob a bank and rape a girl, and God would not love you ANY less, he just loves eternally, even though he is weeping at our sins. Judgement must be executed, from a perfect, flawless and beautiful, loving God - anything less would be unjust, which is why I love him and he brings me peace, even when I screw up and fall flat on my face (MANY times!) .

LMGDFAO
I can't believe that in this day and age there are still grown up educated, and otherwise intelligent people who believe in such rubbish.
There may be someone or something who created this universe (the evidence for that is all but non-existent of course), but the likelihood of it being any god of the sort described in any of the holy books or believed by any of the major religions, is precisely, zip.

Oops, damn, I've polluted the thread! 

Dave.

[IanB]

God...

Uh oh. There is a fool abroad. 

God can only be all that you say because God lives only inside your head. There is no evidence here in the real world of any such thing as an eternal being.

"God loves me" is nice to hear, but what is the value or worth of such love when it is ephemeral and unable to deliver anything but nice feelings?

[IanB]

It's alright to disagree, Dave, but do you think it's kind to trash someone's beliefs?

This is the bit I don't get.

We can understand the foolishness of believing in Father Christmas.

We can understand the foolishness of believing in Fairies.

We can understand the foolishness of believing in Dragons or Unicorns.

Why is it not foolish to believe in an invisible, perfect, omnipotent being who never has the slightest measurable impact on the world?

[Mechatrommer]

Why is it not foolish to believe in an invisible, perfect, omnipotent being who never has the slightest measurable impact on the world?

nahw you see? the burden of proof is to the person who claimed. i didnt say anything but i admit, the proof of existence is harder than the proof of nonexistence if its never been seen. what i can do is only projecting from what i've seen... everythings in existence are in 'pair'.

[T4P]

It's alright to disagree, Dave, but do you think it's kind to trash someone's beliefs?

This is the bit I don't get.

We can understand the foolishness of believing in Father Christmas.

We can understand the foolishness of believing in Fairies.

We can understand the foolishness of believing in Dragons or Unicorns.

Why is it not foolish to believe in an invisible, perfect, omnipotent being who never has the slightest measurable impact on the world?

+1

[IanB]

Please, if you have the time, watch this video, but if not, cool :-)

Quite entertaining, thank you.

It is interesting how "evangelists" like that can use distorted facts and twisted logic to bamboozle people into agreeing with unsupported statements. If I were of a religious mind I would call that kind of sneaky, underhanded behaviour sinful. If I were of a religious mind.

[A Hellene]

Alright... I will make an attempt to reach out to our more pious co-bloggers.
So, please, bear with me...


The problem, most of us have, is with the organised religions and their inhumane dogmas. Dogmas that presumptuously state that, This is what you should believe and you should live your lives by; and we will throw to the flames and make suffer those of you who do not submit to our wills...

If you asked me, what the more intuitive people think of as a god, I believe it is nothing else than pure knowledge: The millions of years of the knowledge and the experience accumulated throughout our presence on this planet (the Archanthropus of Petralona, a homo sapiens specimen found in 1959 near Thessaloniki, is dated to be 740,000 years old). This is knowledge and experience that we all carry within ourselves as our instincts, which were passed onto us by our maternal touch and nutrition while our brains were still being wired up during our fetation time.

I guess I must be a supporter of the cumulative cellular memory theory, or something like that, which has nothing to do with the theosophical deceptions some questionable minorities advocate. After all, the Organ Transplants Cellular Memory effect has been repeatedly acknowledged by the scientific community --repeatedly acknowledged, even if it cannot yet be understood...

Since knowledge is power, we are powerful --but we are not supposed to know that because we will become difficult to be governed and to be manipulated. So, the burden of discovering our power falls upon our own shoulders. Of course, in order to use that power, we will have to unlearn all the nonsense we have been taught since our birth, nonsense that has actively closed our minds, and to learn to communicate first with ourselves and then with our fellow people. Is there any better promise than that? The good thing is that we can have all this in our current life we actually live; not in some hypothetical promised life, which can never be confirmed, after our actual death.

Is there any reason why we should choose to remain subjects to those thousands of years old inhumane dogmas that require from us to be blindly obedient to cunning minorities (please watch carefully those two documentaries; and then, watch them again and again until they have nothing more to tell you) that are killing people indiscriminately for a few thousand years straight and now our host, the earth itself?

All I am asking of anyone is to try to see these thousands of years old illogical deliriums, that have been costing us human lives since their beginnings, with a critical eye; by using that sharp instrument we all possess, called critical thinking, this latent mental muscle that always gets stronger with intellectual exercise.


-George

[amspire]

Oops, damn, I've polluted the thread! 

Dave.

Sucked in big time Dave. They got you!

Personally, I believe in Gravity, and I never get upset if someone claims Gravity does not exist. If something is totally and absloutely true to you, then someone else's opinion is completely irrelevant, isn't it? It just does not matter in the slightest. If it does, what is it about your beliefs that make them so vulnerable?

Probably the fact that the datasheets for deities are really badly written - I have a lot of trouble matching the specifications to my bench tests.

But I guess if you live in a glass house, there is nothing to beat the fun of throwing stones.

Richard.

[IanB]

I am patient, I am not trying to make you look stupid, and I am a curious person.

Don't worry about it. I am not foolish enough to think that debating with you will serve any purpose or will change your mind.

I'll let you into a secret. Once upon a time I was a born again Christian. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour. At the time it somehow seemed "right". It was nice to know the Truth.

Over time the reality dawned on me that this was a false belief. But to see the light had to come from within. It is not something others can convince you of, you have to convince yourself of this.

In time, maybe, you will see the light and realize the truth. Maybe not. If you never do, then one day you will die content in your belief, and never wake up again. Your family will remember your passing, and the world maybe, and in that memory you will live on. It is neither sad, nor happy, but just what it is.

Best wishes, and may your life be blessed.

[Mechatrommer]

Please, if you have the time, watch this video, but if not, cool :-)

nice background and bikinis. why dont we embrace nudity? and start treating the penises and pussies are the same like the rest of body part? i believe 'they' should have the right to being equal? dont talk moral, where that comes from?

Okay. So, taking God out of the equation, tell me how you think the universe created itself, out of nothing, remembering that there was NOTHING beforehand. I'm curious...

dont talk to me like i dont believe in god. life is created from an explosion of energy creating matter and antimatter. and that energy comes from i dont know where. people now start to believe a sea of antimatter exists somewhere just because it lies in Dirac's equation and human found a way to fabricate and contain it. but still it is in no natural way we will be able to see it next door. but still some people may hold true about creationism from nonexistence. not to mention the harmony of the law of the universe that in turn creates everything including us, that 'academic' people termed it as 'the evolution'. that harmony of law, its hard to prove who created it. not as easy as to prove the creator of law of a country.

@a-hellene.. maybe you are partly right about god is a collective knowledge. people cannot think god as a one particular entity with 2 legs and arms, he/it can be anything, even everywhere surrounding all the universe in the form of intangible intelligence entity governing the harmony of the law and capable of changing it to suit fit. and i believe it always has been, even before the nonexistence (big bang), thats what i believe, i dont care what other believe and i'm not going to prove that. and i believe jesus is just a man like us, a messenger, not a saviour. you do crime, you'll pay for it, not jesus.

[Mechatrommer]

just see this spiraling downhill...

and you take the offense? why dont you leave your emotional behind? this is the ugly truth that its the neverending albeit interesting debate. just mentioning the three letter g.o.d can be 'derailing' continuosly offtopic posts, its hard to resist face it.

[EEVblog]

Please, if you have the time, watch this video, but if not, cool :-)

OH NO! Banana Man ALERT! 
Damn, there goes the rest of the day, I'll be too busy thinking about that banana!

Dave.

[EEVblog]

Okay. So, taking God out of the equation, tell me how you think the universe created itself, out of nothing, remembering that there was NOTHING beforehand. I'm curious...

Ok then, read Lawrence Krauss's book, A Universe From Nothing.
http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/145162445X
He is one of the top physicists who are working on that very question.
Just like science has worked on and discovered the countless gaps in our knowledge that were once filled only by religion and "god did it". God, whichever one you believe in, is just an ever dwindling "god of the gaps". To guote Neil Tyson: "Religion is just an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance"



Also, there are plenty of Youtube clips of  Lawrence Krauss talking about "nothing".

Dave.

[EEVblog]

OH NO! Banana Man ALERT! 
Damn, there goes the rest of the day, I'll be too busy thinking about that banana!

Dave.

Ehhh? 

You don't know that Ray Comfort is the incredibly famous "Banana Man"?
Along with his equally famous sick-kick Kirk Cameron.

The original hilarity, and the real answer of course:


Dave.

[Psi]

There is so much i could say in this thread, both for and against the idea.
But i really don't know that there's any point in doing so.

But maybe i'll say this.

Religion MUST be a personal thing. You should believe what makes sense to you, not what makes sense to someone else.
A religious book (or any book on religious or spiritual subject matter) can only give you various points of view and concepts to consider and shouldn't be though of as fact. (Not unless you yourself saw god or the universe writing the book and therefor have a good reason to believe it correct and not contaminated by translation or reinterpretation)

It will always be up to you to decide which faith/religious/spiritual ideas makes sense and which don't and this will always be different to what other people think.
It doesn't mean one person is correct and the other is wrong it means both people have half the picture. or maybe only 1/100000 of the picture.
If something beyond the physical exists it will be so far beyond our understanding that we can only see a very small part of it at a time.

Assuming we can know the complete truth is what leads to serious problems.

[Lightages]

Belief without proof, without room to change your view if new evidence comes about, without any evidence at all to support your belief over something else, is called faith. It is closed and self supporting by ignoring facts.

Belief in something based on evidence and experiment to prove or disprove the evidence and the belief is science. Science grows and changes the belief to match what is known and what is being observed.

Faith by definition is a way of living to avoid having to think or reason.

Science is the way of life that encourages thinking, exploring and seeking out information. By definition it is the opposite of the closed minded system of faith.

By starting a thread trying to shove your closed minded belief system down other people's throats you reveal your own insecurity of your own faith based belief system. Any real scientist, those who think and test for themselves, will find the argument you promote as old tired and a waste of time and a sad indication of how far the human race still has to go to be free of the fascist and divided world that religious and theist beliefs impose on all.

 I will not argue the point. I will not discuss it with someone who admits that there is no way to change what he believes.

I make this post only to stop being a quite bystander while the religious nuts make all the noise.

[EEVblog]

It will always be up to you to decide what makes sense and what doesn't and this will always be different to what other people think.
It doesn't mean one person is correct and the other is wrong

Not so.
Most things that are statements of fact, have a right and wrong answer.
Most things are knowable through science, and a pretty good case can be made that all things are ultimately knowable given enough research.

If someone says that a god created the world in 6 days or whatever, then they are very very wrong. Dead wrong in fact.
If someone says that the world was created 6000 years ago, then they are very very wrong. Dead wrong in fact.
If someone says that a Noah put all animals on ship and blah blah, then they are very very wrong. Dead wrong in fact.
If someone says that the sun stopped in the sky or whatever, then they are very very wrong. Dead wrong in fact.
If someone says that *insert any one of countless silly bible stories*, then they are almost certainly wrong. Very likely dead wrong as a matter of fact.

Just believing something (and having millions of other believe it too) does not make it true.
And there are countless other examples of this in every religion and other silly stories and myths etc

Dave.

[Psi]

It will always be up to you to decide what makes sense and what doesn't and this will always be different to what other people think.
It doesn't mean one person is correct and the other is wrong

Not so.
Most things that are statements of fact, have a right and wrong answer.
Most things are knowable through science, and a pretty good case can be made that all things are ultimately knowable given enough research.

Sorry, that statement was in relation to faith/religious beliefs due to their unprovable nature.
I didn't mean it to be as generic as it sounded. It obviously doesn't apply to science.

If someone says that a god created the world in 6 days or whatever, then they are very very wrong. Dead wrong in fact.
If someone says that the world was created 6000 years ago, then they are very very wrong. Dead wrong in fact.
If someone says that a Noah put all animals on ship and blah blah, then they are very very wrong. Dead wrong in fact.
If someone says that the sun stopped in the sky or whatever, then they are very very wrong. Dead wrong in fact.
If someone says that *insert any one of countless silly bible stories*, then they are almost certainly wrong. Very likely dead wrong as a matter of fact.

That would come under my comment about only believing what's in a book if it makes sense to you.

[EEVblog]

Belief without proof, without room to change your view if new evidence comes about, without any evidence at all to support your belief over something else, is called faith. It is closed and self supporting by ignoring facts.

Belief in something based on evidence and experiment to prove or disprove the evidence and the belief is science. Science grows and changes the belief to match what is known and what is being observed.

Faith by definition is a way of living to avoid having to think or reason.

Science is the way of life that encourages thinking, exploring and seeking out information. By definition it is the opposite of the closed minded system of faith.

Well said.

By starting a thread trying to shove your closed minded belief system down other people's throats you reveal your own insecurity of your own faith based belief system. Any real scientist, those who think and test for themselves, will find the argument you promote as old tired and a waste of time

It's not just scientists that do this. Every child does it automatically as a matter of course as they grow up and explore and try to understand the world around them.
Why does every child (every single one of them!) outgrow the belief in Santa, the easter bunny, the tooth fairy, or whatever, yet many will still cling to equally silly and embarrassingly false religious myths as they get older?
The answer lies in social pressure, intimidation, and fear.
There is no parent, group, school, friends, or society in general putting pressure on you to believe in santa or the easter bunny as you get older. But the opposite is certainly true for religion, and that's the only why it survives.
Any modern educated adult who does not have these pressures, and truly thinks about, opens their mind, and does the research, cannot help but come to the same conclusion about the religious stories as they did about santa.

Dave.

[Rufus]

There is no parent, group, school, friends, or society in general putting pressure on you to believe in santa or the easter bunny as you get older. But the opposite is certainly true for religion, and that's the only why it survives.

Natural selection makes man believe what others tell him. Being told and believing that the stripy things with huge front teeth will bite your head off if you get too close makes you much more likely to survive than the man who decides he needs experimental proof.

A fundamental teaching of all religion is that you must make others believe what you do (convert them), if you can't convert them killing them is OK. You must also make your offspring believe (and in the case of Catholics for example try to have lots of them). The teachings all involve various threats and dangling carrots to encourage belief.

Like everything else religions exist because they have the right recipe for survival. They exploit part of man's recipe for survival. Hopefully faced with better education and communication in the modern world they will struggle and eventually go the way of the Dodo.

By starting a thread trying to shove your closed minded belief system down other people's throats you reveal your own insecurity of your own faith based belief system.

As discussed above shoving your belief down other people's throats is a fundamental part of all religion, just be glad he (not sure who he is) isn't trying to kill you yet.

[Mechatrommer]

Religion MUST be a personal thing

no you cant think that way. this is the way i see it... religion is a way of life, teaching whats moral and whats immoral, and its from god. dont kill people for no reason, dont drink alcohol because its bad is more than its good, dont fuck without marriage you'll screw heritage uncontrolled birth and abortion poison to moralistic nature etc etc (example) and its absolute even if you cannot comprehend why is the reason, including why we have to pray. just think we are a bunch of scientific community trying to unravel the truth here no personal mean

when you see religion as personal thing, then it will soon become a community thing, and then political correct thing, and then profitable thing, and then guess what?.... war! that fucking radical fanatics community and terrorism, all religion got one at least. but when you see it as a teaching from god and you have faith in it, then all you care is following the teaching and become obedience, not that it wil ask you to kill other people because they are not following the teaching, all you care is yourself and how you face Him in afterlife. i may put it in the wrong word. but somehow thats my understanding.

but the point is, all the problem involving the name of religion (anykind of religion) is because of this greedy bunch of radical people. they say they are holy and start killing other people, well fuck that i say. easy analogy is like the "military industrial complex", i can say thats a religion too. even aethism is a religion in my point of view (the teaching of there is no god). the problem start when you get too obsessed and become fanatics.

so for me, as i've learnt and read about science. i'm not a 100% faithfull/follow to religion teaching myself, but i try to correlate between what the book said with whats have been discovered by mankind, but so far i cannot fault the book, infact they are inline side by side in "harmony". i'll be looking forward to see mankind will discover the "7 stair gate to god's throne", its been mentioned in quran surah al-maarij FWIW. big bang and the day of creation have been mentioned in the book, but only when man discovered it, and its become meaningfull.

in the book, the creation of the universe took 7 days, its mentioned in bible, and rementioned the same in quran. except the argument that in the bible mentioning the god rest in His throne in the 7th day iirc when the creation is completed. implying the god was tired. no, god will never tired, i believe He sat on His throne and start managing the reality with 'kunfayakun' (be and it will become), but never tired. managing universe is... easy for God, down to atomic/muon level. and if you really believe universe is created in 7 days, ie 7x24hours then you are a dumb fool. the book writing in the way in alot of semaphores, analogy and implicit meaning of literacy, you need to learn linguistic and arabic/hebrew to really understand the meaning. sometime one word will means 2 or more thing. 7 days in god's ruler can be in thousands of years of what we understand it. so 7 days can be 7Kyears, or 70Kyear who knows? or even using lunar calendar or 1Kyears. same with many other aspects. the book in another way teaches you to look it a more broader mind, not the narrow view of 1day=24hours or god=2arms and legs.

among some of scientific finds thats written in the book before its been discovered:
1) creation from big bang and the general description of the formation of earth/planet and sky (not cloud, it may means cloud but broader means space and universe)
2) formation of fetus in womb from something that "cling". (no gynacology during the time)
3) deep sea and river consist from layers of water, and they both cannot mixed (white water and salt water)

what has not been discovered:
1) 7 stairgate to god (quran surah al-maarij, the ascending stair)
2) a device to cross that gate (its called buraq used by prophet muhamad to go to god's throne to see hell and heaven)
now dont be too dogmatic, the device could be in any form (warping of space and time whatever, its not been discovered) and maybe the hell and heaven is nowhere but in your dream, a persistent one! who knows?

somemore scientific/knowledge based POV:
http://www.kalamullah.com/Books/BibleQuranScience.pdf
http://www.speed-light.info/angels_speed_of_light.htm#speed_of_light_12000

and to be fair. this is aethist view to defy it, you may pick what you want to read
http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2010/08/quran-and-speed-of-light.html
but for me, what i understand the book will never give a precise figure, speed of light can be given in different unit giving different number, but its there explained... generally. YMMV

food for thought: have you scale yourself to the universe? how tiny you are? to the eyes of the universe? let alone god (assuming one is believing god exists) and do you think you are significant? how significant ants to your eyes? if you walk on a road and realize you stepped on a bunch of ants and dying, will you care to bring all of them to hospital and curse how faulty you are? none i believe, ant is not significant to our eyes (of course they have purpose in macro model of ecosystem) but none i've seen caring ants too much, do you care if they curse you? not as well. so if you live or dead will it make any difference to the universe/god? why do you expect a wealth and then only to accept god existence? or if you are lazy enough to go pray (like me ), is that a reason to deny god? and be satisfied with "no need to pray"? our physical needs food and care to live, do you think its not the case with your mental and moral aspect? why?



well i think i can write a book now, but is anybody going to buy? i think not. and for some, if you still cannot comprehend it, just treat it as a bedtime story just to make you asleep since you've screwed your (read as my) sleep schedule 3am and wake up late tommorow to work

btw: who did transfer all the posts here? excellent!

[MrPlacid]

LMGDFAO
I can't believe that in this day and age there are still grown up educated, and otherwise intelligent people who believe in such rubbish.

What you saying, Dave? They are everywhere. Turn on your tv and watch our presidents and politicians. They are college educated + brainwashed. What's odd is that they are ahead of us in life and looked up with admiration. We're just lucky the holy books don't tell them that we must sacrifice a virgin every year for good fortune.