Ye Religion Thread

[deft]

it's not your opinion.  if you had been born in a world without religion would you ever have come to the conclusion some all powerful being created everything we know? lol.

[DaHanG]

everything you said is completely repetitive, and you acknowledge you're bending the rules of the big bang theory to suit your personal needs, so i feel i have no reason to go further in this debate since you're just making them up.

since there is no evidence from something coming from nothing(or being around forever), we will then say it is not more improbable there is a god - comparitivley.

this is just hilarious. you have a problem with matter coming from nothing, but no problem at all with something supernatural (way way more improbable) coming from nothing. if this is the way your brain works, then fine.

the intellectual elite of the 18th and 19th centuries were deists, which is what you clearly are. the only reason they were deists, however, is because they had no way of explaining the complexity of life - something must have guided it. when darwinism raised people's consciousness on evolution, and very slow gradual changes, the intellectual elite dropped idea of the supernatural entirely - atheism. there are VERY few deists in this world today, because on both a religious and logical standpoint it just doesn't make sense.

[reaper]

the intellectual elite dropped idea of the supernatural entirely

i wouldn't say that, there are many highly respected theoritcal physicsts that believe in god.

[quadz]

i was just pointing out a god of man would be a reason for the universe(with life), and this is an explanation for it's success from an arbitrary beggining.

[DaHanG]

the intellectual elite dropped idea of the supernatural entirely

i wouldn't say that, there are many highly respected theoritcal physicsts that believe in god.

highly respected by who? you don't even respect them enough to spell theoretical or physicist correctly. anyways, i was talking about the deist thinkers (not physicists) of the 18th and 19th centuries (thomas paine, kant, etc etc). if they were exposed to darwinism, it's more than likely that they would understand that there is no need for a supernatural being to exist.

[deft]

why is stephen hawkings wife believing in god supposed to be some sort of point? ignorance is what leads to religious beliefs, why wouldn't it prevent people from changing them?

[DaHanG]

why does stephen hawkings wife not believing supposed to be some sort of point? ignorance is what leads to religious beliefs, why wouldn't it prevent people from changing them?

no, his wife not believing is evidence that there is a god! 

[reaper]

This makes no sense to me, though.

[DaHanG]

looking again at the page you got a lot of your information from: "Since big bang cosmology implies that the initial state is instead a lawless singularity, big bang cosmology disconfirms the theistic hypothesis." of course, you can make the rules of the theory suit your personal needs for peace of mind.

i was saying you can't say god is more complex, so less probable, than something coming from nothing. what are you comparing it to,  you are just making something up like i am making up a god.

come on...use your head. how can you disagree that matter is less complex than god (a divine intelligence that does not consist of matter)? just because we do not know how either can come about does not make it a 50/50 chance.

Regards,

top left hand corner of this post (my nickname in case you forget)

[reaper]

Regards,

top left hand corner of this post (my nickname in case you forget)

sorry i put my nickname at the end of my post. i never liked to use regards either.

[QuakeDuke]

I see. Ok.. and this would differ how from a "non-religious" person picking and choosing what they like instead of what (to others) might be more reasonable?

lets see how it would differ...hmmm.

non-religious people (i would think) do NOT believe in some sort of pre-life before conception?

Ok. I'm pretty dense tonight. What does belief or nonbelief in some sort of pre-life before conception have to do with the question I asked?

QD

[DaHanG]

this is the religion thread, i am not talking about picking and choosing in general (all humans do that). belief in life before conception is something a non-religious person would likely never accept because there's no evidence of such a thing. it is 100% baseless. it is likely, however, that a religious person may believe this while acknowledging there is no evidence, and it pretty much does not make sense in reality. this is the difference, because reality/reason/logic restricts one thinker, and nothing restricts the other.

[QuakeDuke]

this is the religion thread, i am not talking about picking and choosing in general (all humans do that). belief in life before conception is something a non-religious person would likely never accept because there's no evidence of such a thing. it is 100% baseless. it is likely, however, that a religious person may believe this while acknowledging there is no evidence, and it pretty much does not make sense in reality. this is the difference, because reality/reason/logic restricts one thinker, and nothing restricts the other.

The question I asked was based on the statements (enclosed below so no one has to comb the thread to find them) you made during the thread. It appears to me to are specifically refering to me (as a religous person) picking and choosing what I wanted. The question I then asked you was how was this diffrent than anyone else (as a non-religious person) picking and choosing what they wanted. You still haven't answered the question, just tried to redirect the conversation.

As for reality/reason/logic restricting one thinker and nothing restricting the other - that's bull*  Whether it makes sense to a particular persons worldview or "reality" has nothing to do with being able to think and consider concepts.

Answer the question or don't. I'm not going to argue with you about your limited ability to conceptulize there are planes of existences that science cannot and never will be able to "proof". I still say the more man learns, the more the smarter of man knows we don't know anything yet.

QD

i don't really have a problem with being dead. it didn't bother me for billions of years before 1988.

How do you know you didn't have a problem with it? The whole concept of a "pre-life" (which would be necessary to have died) opens up the necessity of an "after-life" of some sort. 

Yeahbut...  

I thought that was kind of axiomatic?  For example: would you agree it's impossible to know the entire Universe as we understand it wasn't just created 30 seconds ago?  How would we know?

Well, using the reasoning I've been trying to following in this thread, it's impossible for the entire Universe as we understand it to have been created just 30 seconds ago because of all the hard (fossils etc) evidence that points to the contrary To say all this evidence could be done "naturally" in the last 30 seconds and be shown to be millions/billions/trillions of years old doesn't meet (and I emphasis current) current scientific methods...

i am enjoying the irony behind these two statements. you pick and choose what you like instead of what is most reasonable. a religious person picking and choosing what they like? NEVAR!

DHG

[quadz]

there are planes of existences that science cannot and never will be able to "proof".

That may be true in the most general sense (the same way science will never be able to prove there's no Flying Spaghetti Monster.)

However, I would counter that for the subset of planes of existence that can actually be sensed by humans, science will eventually have an explanation for them.

[DaHanG]

this is the religion thread, i am not talking about picking and choosing in general (all humans do that). belief in life before conception is something a non-religious person would likely never accept because there's no evidence of such a thing. it is 100% baseless. it is likely, however, that a religious person may believe this while acknowledging there is no evidence, and it pretty much does not make sense in reality. this is the difference, because reality/reason/logic restricts one thinker, and nothing restricts the other.

The question I asked was based on the statements (enclosed below so no one has to comb the thread to find them) you made during the thread. It appears to me to are specifically refering to me (as a religous person) picking and choosing what I wanted. The question I then asked you was how was this diffrent than anyone else (as a non-religious person) picking and choosing what they wanted. You still haven't answered the question, just tried to redirect the conversation.

picking and choosing is indeed picking and choosing. the difference on this subject, however, is the method of doing so. if someone concludes that christ literally does not have a biological father because of a sacred text, that is different from reaching conclusions based on evidence. sure, in the eyes of the beholder he/she may be 100% convinced muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse, but it does not make it in the slightest bit probable (we cannot disprove this either). a skeptic may ask why nobody before/after muhammad flew to heaven, but a believer will say it's in the koran so there is no reason to question it's validity.

As for reality/reason/logic restricting one thinker and nothing restricting the other - that's bull*  Whether it makes sense to a particular persons worldview or "reality" has nothing to do with being able to think and consider concepts.

Answer the question or don't. I'm not going to argue with you about your limited ability to conceptulize there are planes of existences that science cannot and never will be able to "proof". I still say the more man learns, the more the smarter of man knows we don't know anything yet.

QD

you're right, a sacred text usually limits the religious thinker. there is no way around this if one literally believes their book is the word of god (i'm speaking of religious in the sense of christian/jewish/muslim/etc., not the einsteinian religion). why do you think there is such thing as creation science? people 'know' they are right so they will do whatever they can to prove it. imagine that forensic archaeologists unearthed DNA evidence showing jesus indeed lacked a biological father. it's not likely that christians would say "who cares? science means nothing in regard to theoligical questions." they would certainly celebrate this finding.

this, in a sense, is my point. a religious person (believing god wrote their sacred text) does not acknowledge any evidence against their case. if they measured the evidence on both sides in an unbiased manner, we can rightfully assume a significant chunk of believers in the sacred text would dwindle. but no, they simply 'know' they're right, or simply want to believe because they get a warm fuzzy feeling in doing so. a non-religious person is obligated to truthfully investigate the matter at hand and make a fair assessment based on the evidence/lack of presented.

this is not supposed to imply theism vs atheism, but perhaps christianity vs non belief.