Ye Religion Thread

[quadz]

i think atheism is bad, in it's purest form.

[reaper]

you're still missing my point. the original was that atheism doesn't drive bad behavior

many factors drive bad behavior.

[DaHanG]

you're still missing my point. the original was that atheism doesn't drive bad behavior

many factors drive bad behavior.  atheism implies nothing happens after you die - therefore there is no consequence to your actions after death.   can you really say lack of consequence isn't a motivator for bad behavior?  lack of consequence can help compel someone to commit murder - a prime example is jerffery dahlmer.  that smells like atheism drives bad behavior to me.  atheism may not be a primary contributing factor to bad behavior, but you can see it can compel someone to do bad things.

i really enjoyed your claim that the scandinavian countries, currently among the most secular and yet most peaceful internally are somehow not atheists - based on their good behavior. you're shooting yourself in the conceptual foot with such statements like that. maybe no consequences in the afterlife drives the weak to bad behavior, but luckily the weak are traditionally theists.

nevermind, i forgot that your definition of god was 'what we can't understand = god'. we don't understand god for the same reason we don't understand fairies and leprechauns.

you could be right.  however until science shows us an explantion for why things are they way they are, and how it happened, it's reasonable to think god is in a different realm than fairies or leprechauns.

science has explanations for why things are. the only thing science hasn't really entered is "why is there something rather than nothing?". to say a highly complex intelligence created this only shifts the question as to "why is there a highly complex intelligence within this nothingness?". it's a non-answer.

i dont think god is literally speaking to anyone.

this does not mean that others feel the same, as you claim bush agrees that god didn't literally speak to him:

i was saying he didn't mean what he said literally

if you read his quotes and listen to his speeches on the matter, bush clearly felt he had an intimate conversation with god.

and that was george senior who made the atheist citizen comment.

[reaper]

science has explanations for why things are. the only thing science hasn't really entered is "why is there something rather than nothing?". to say a highly complex intelligence created this only shifts the question as to "why is there a highly complex intelligence within this nothingness?". it's a non-answer.

i don't disagree that believing in a god, could invoke more questions, which we probably won't have answers to.  you think that's all science has left, as far as the big pictures goes.  that seems a little shortsighted to me, i feel the opposite, we've discovered how much we don't know.  if you believe in the theory of simple beginnings, how can you be happy with the current scientific theories: we are here by extreme chance.

[DaHanG]

how have we discovered how much we don't know? yes, we are here by extreme chance: i was picked of millions of sperm to be 'the one'. do i think this was an accident? of course not! it was god!

[reaper]

i was picked of millions of sperm to be 'the one'.

you can think what you want, if you want to think some extremely small ball of matter forms the universe with no cause, all by accident thats fine.

[DaHanG]

as i've already said, both simple and complex beginnings are difficult to accept. however, complex beginnings does exactly what the title suggests: makes it more complex. if you have trouble explaining how matter in some form could have just 'always been there', just think how intellectually dissatisfying it is to say 'a highly complex all powerful intelligence has always been there'. the latter increases chance into uncharted territory.

i'm curious, how do you define accident? i don't recall ever even seeing that word in a science textbook.

[[BTF]DeathStalker]

Well I'm off work tonight, tomarrow, and Tuesday. So I have plenty of time to debate.
First of all no one ever said anything about this.

Revelation 13
 16And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
 17And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
 18Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Well the Beast is already here. It

[reaper]

as i've already said, both simple and complex beginnings are difficult to accept. however, complex beginnings does exactly what the title suggests: makes it more complex. if you have trouble explaining how matter in some form could have just 'always been there', just think how intellectually dissatisfying it is to say 'a highly complex all powerful intelligence has always been there'. the latter increases chance into uncharted territory.

you may find that thought intellectually dissatisfying, i don't. if god exists, and he's incomprehensible, to me that's just how it is.

[reaper]

Well the Beast is already here. It

[metaL]

it doesnt matter. after all, everything we know of was created by mere cooincidence.. as well as the rest of the universe or what may lie beyond. the human race is just a big mistake basically, apes were supposed to have ruled the galaxi until these humans came along, even though we supposedly evolved from apes but yet apes still live on earth and so do we, and there is no inbetween species alive (cromagnon, homo habilis, etc).  everything was created by chance. wow, some people might even say we are lucky.

[DaHanG]

as i've already said, both simple and complex beginnings are difficult to accept. however, complex beginnings does exactly what the title suggests: makes it more complex. if you have trouble explaining how matter in some form could have just 'always been there', just think how intellectually dissatisfying it is to say 'a highly complex all powerful intelligence has always been there'. the latter increases chance into uncharted territory.

you may find that thought intellectually dissatisfying, i don't. if god exists, and he's incomprehensible, to me that's just how it is.  i don't think most people are dissatisfied that their belief in god implies certain questions will remain unanswered.   you view god as improbable, many people don't feel the same.

it's intellectually satisfying to say there was an all powerful being that was around for an eternity (and does not require an explanation) before the universe was created? that seems more like a way to simply avoid the problem at hand. as i've said, the entity of god himself IS the most improbable being conceivable. name one single entity less improbable than god.

i'm curious, how do you define accident? i don't recall ever even seeing that word in a science textbook.

you can't expect certain results from the very beginning of the big bang, so it's extraordinarily unlikely to get a universe that supports life.  evidence suggests that if there were previous big bangs a universe would form that would exist forever.  both scientific results are not very conducive to life.  you could have a multi-verse which could make life probable; however since we don't observer a multi-verse this is almost pure speculation.  also, initial scientific analysis has shown a multi-verse shouldn't exists.   string theory could change the probability of the way the universe forms, but this is just a more detailed understanding, it shouldn't effect the overall idea that the universe is unlikely to form the way it did.

stephen hawking proposed the "no boundary-proposal" , he words his idea as a vague proposal: the proposal states time existed before the big bang.  he says god wouldn't work arbitrarily if this proposal was true, i suppose he means  you have a timestamp before the bigbang.  however when he refers to god it seems he's doing so to appease the readers. so, you are left with the fact  that the universe forms on accident, and is improbable.  i think you have to agree that things happened arbitrarily and it was improbable we are here - if you want a simple beginning.  the prior thoughts lead me to believe we should expect something complicated before the big bang, and if so where does that leave the answers that you deduce from evolution. this evidence, and strict logical thinking does not show the grace in your philosophy (simple beginnings).  i think we've only discovered how much we don't know.

the theory states also that no one particular universe is any less likely than another. hawking specifically states in his no boundary lecture that "...the Big Bang is a beginning that is required by the dynamical laws that govern the universe. It is therefore intrinsic to the universe, and is not imposed on it from outside." when it comes to cosmology, i will take hawking's word over reaper's. so what if the universe formed naturally, do you want the singularity to have a mind of it's own? if god created the universe, there is absolutely no doubt he could have done MUCH better.

it seems to me based on observation there isn't an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent being guiding the universe. if we just look at our planet (which many theists consider the central purpose of the universe), we see that over 99% of all species on this earth have become extinct. does this look like the work of a guiding force, or is nature just running its course without divine intervention? if god is all powerful and all good, why is there evil? "he gave us free will" is a typical response (which is a pretty horrific thing to do when considering what he knows happens because of it - but lets leave that problem aside), but there's plenty of evil being done by hurricances / tornados / earthquakes / disease / etc (the list goes on). a response to that may be "god designed these evil happenings for humans to overcome them and bring the best of them". however, if i were to pick on some 4 year old girl and intentionally poison her drink which leads to her death (the same way she might catch some fatal virus that god can clearly prevent) for her family to become stronger, i would be dismissed as one wicked person. morality is morality, no matter who or what is responsible. if this is the way god operates, i have no respect for him. if there was a god, i don't think he would operate like this.

[DaHanG]

the human race is just a big mistake basically, apes were supposed to have ruled the galaxi until these humans came along, even though we supposedly evolved from apes but yet apes still live on earth and so do we, and there is no inbetween species alive (cromagnon, homo habilis, etc).

unfortunately evolution is a fact :>.

[[BTF]DeathStalker]

i don't know what to say....does the bible have something against improving economic transactions? how many beasts are there, just one?

It's just something I put in here to draw debate about Revolations and the Validation of the Bible.
No there's more beasts, but this is "the" Beast, and no the bible has nothing against improving economic transactions, just bringing the world under one world rule and the fact that it's purpose is to bring the entire world under it's control.

[reaper]

it's intellectually satisfying to say there was an all powerful being that was around for an eternity (and does not require an explanation) before the universe was created? that seems more like a way to simply avoid the problem at hand. as i've said, the entity of god himself IS the most improbable being conceivable. name one single entity less improbable than god

i think the human race is on the right track trying to understand everything they can.