A question for the religious ones.

[skipper kelly]

Originally posted by IceTemple
Hey marcuz you forgot soccer. Some fans in some countries seem to think killing over it is the way to go!

As for you Skipper, I wasn't feeling sorry for myself and if you had read it properly you would have seen this: "lived to "get on with" life".

I was merely saying that my life is different to Katthawk (no matter any similarities) and so I see and beleive different things. I don't expect her, or yourself, to beleive the way I do and don't appreciate ppl looking down on others as her original statement implied.

 

[Stevo]

Originally posted by Chiz
Well this is what I believe:

God created everything. For me, I can just look at everything in the earth, and know that there must be some supernatural designer. I find there is no way that chance could have produced the complex world we live in.

Why is it so unfathomable that chance is responsible for the world we live in?

Quantum mechanics, the theory which can be used to explain all of chemistry, is based on probability theory. Very roughly speaking, what actually occurs is usually what is most likely to occur.

The flaw in your argument is that you simplify things far too much. Our world is only a very small part of the universe. I've encountered people who've wanted to use entropy to argue that our world has gradually become more ordered, and thus our existence isn't the product of mere chance. These are usually the same people who have very little background in science.

So while our world is quite complex, everything that actually occurs results in a net gain of entropy in the universe. Evolution, a sore point for creationists, does not contradict thermodynamics. An increase in complexity of life results in an increase of entropy of the universe. Very roughly speaking, these things occur because they are likely to occur.

Your argument also seems to follow the one known as the "ontological argument for intelligent design". Basically it is as follows: Because the world is as it is (complex), it is likely that there is an intelligent creator. The implied premiss here is that it is likely that an intelligent creator would create the world as it is. Of course, that premiss is rather debatable. But suppose we grant that premiss to be true, we can then show, by simple manipulations of the probability equations, that for the argument to go through it rests on a simple inequality: It must be more probable for there to be a world designed by an intelligent creator rather than a world not so designed. I think it's rather safe to say that any claim either way there is very debatable.

I think the evidence you speak of is merely that you feel a world devoid of God is less than meaningful. I have no issue with that, but it's not evidence that has credibility for others, that is my sole point.

 

[Katthawk]

Originally posted by IceTemple
I was merely saying that my life is different to Katthawk (no matter any similarities) and so I see and beleive different things. I don't expect her, or yourself, to beleive the way I do and don't appreciate ppl looking down on others as her original statement implied.

Hey, I really wasn't sitting in an ivory tower. I sound like I look down on others simply because I have spent so much time taking everything less than seriously.

Can we now be friends? Go on, you know you want to.

 

[marcuz]

Read these two posts

Originally posted by Stevo
Why is it so unfathomable that chance is responsible for the world we live in?

Quantum mechanics, the theory which can be used to explain all of chemistry, is based on probability theory. Very roughly speaking, what actually occurs is usually what is most likely to occur.

The flaw in your argument is that you simplify things far too much. Our world is only a very small part of the universe. I've encountered people who've wanted to use entropy to argue that our world has gradually become more ordered, and thus our existence isn't the product of mere chance. These are usually the same people who have very little background in science.

So while our world is quite complex, everything that actually occurs results in a net gain of entropy in the universe. Evolution, a sore point for creationists, does not contradict thermodynamics. An increase in complexity of life results in an increase of entropy of the universe. Very roughly speaking, these things occur because they are likely to occur.

Your argument also seems to follow the one known as the "ontological argument for intelligent design". Basically it is as follows: Because the world is as it is (complex), it is likely that there is an intelligent creator. The implied premiss here is that it is likely that an intelligent creator would create the world as it is. Of course, that premiss is rather debatable. But suppose we grant that premiss to be true, we can then show, by simple manipulations of the probability equations, that for the argument to go through it rests on a simple inequality: It must be more probable for there to be a world designed by an intelligent creator rather than a world not so designed. I think it's rather safe to say that any claim either way there is very debatable.

I think the evidence you speak of is merely that you feel a world devoid of God is less than meaningful. I have no issue with that, but it's not evidence that has credibility for others, that is my sole point.

Originally posted by marcuz
Ah yes Religion..the cause of all the worlds problems...With a Irish father and Italian mother it was always inevitable i would be raised a catholic..i can say ive never been happier after giving the church the flick.

My religion now is Football...It's far more enjoyable and i dont feel the need to kill anybody who doesnt follow it unlike some other religions, eg Cristianity, Islam etc etc

Tell me which one of these 2 blokes is a mechanic

Lovely post stevo...too bad i didnt understand half of it. Too many big words for my brain to understand

 

[skilts]

Originally posted by IceTemple
Actually Skilts God tells us to do it. If you can't say it aloud to others then you don't truly believe it.

This would seem to eliminate those of us who are mute. Is there no place in heaven for the silent majority? I ask you because of the privileged insight you seem to enjoy.

 

[Bombers 2003]

Originally posted by skipper kelly
I cannot answer this question, but I have one for you. Do you follow moronism?

No,i have several friends,male and female, who are Mormons.

 

[P_D]

Ahhh skilts... I've been told worse...

Ok, so i'm at a religious school, in religion class, and a friend asks, if a family with their newborn baby is in a car crash on the way home from the hospital, and the baby died, would it go to Heaven or to Hell?

The chaplain's response? Hell, because the baby would not have repented for its sins

 

[Bombers 2003]

Originally posted by llosis
Mormonism is not part of the christian faith - it is a cult.
Their beliefs are irreconcilible to classical christian doctrine.

Ilosis.
1-If Mormonism is a cult,why does it have 11-12 million adherants?.And what mormon doctrine is irreconciliable to Christianity?.If u mean Polygamy,that was abolished in 1890,113yrs ago.Polygamy had a purpose according to Mormon belief.The main stream Mormon neither practices nor supports the custom in the 21st century.

 

[Chiz]

Originally posted by P_D

The chaplain's response? Hell, because the baby would not have repented for its sins

I disagree. Without the knowledge of sin, no one can sin. Thus, the baby would have gone to Heaven.

 

[skilts]

Originally posted by Chiz
Thus, the baby would have gone to Heaven.

Poor bastard. Even a baby deserves better than this.

To be consigned to a life in which people talk like those who think they will go to 'heaven', is my idea of hell.

Think of the company you'd have to keep.

 

[skilts]

Originally posted by P_D
Ahhh skilts... I've been told worse...

Ok, so i'm at a religious school, in religion class, and a friend asks, if a family with their newborn baby is in a car crash on the way home from the hospital, and the baby died, would it go to Heaven or to Hell?

The chaplain's response? Hell, because the baby would not have repented for its sins

It's actually worse than this, P_D. These mothers think they can intuit the ethics of an unborn child, so that child will be acceptable in Heaven. If you were building a religion, any religion, you wouldn't want to exclude the unborn, would you?

Potential customers.

 

[bunsen burner]

Originally posted by Bombers 2003
No,i have several friends,male and female, who are Mormons.

Well that would make for an interesting dinner party. Not.

 

[BL4eva]

Originally posted by P_D
BL4eva, wtf is your problem!?!?
Haven't seen you post anything here except hate-driven religious spiel... why can't you let others believe what they want to believe instead of coming across as a try-hard hardcore poser with an 'anti-religious' stance...

Is it too hard to say nothing at all???

*And before you have a go at me, I'm athiest, but nothing ****es me off more than other people flaming others beliefs simply because they deviate from their own...

Gah?

 

[IceTemple]

Originally posted by Katthawk
Can we now be friends? Go on, you know you want to.

Oh definately! Tonight I feel more mellow.

 

[Stevo]

Originally posted by skilts
It's actually worse than this, P_D. These mothers think they can intuit the ethics of an unborn child, so that child will be acceptable in Heaven. If you were building a religion, any religion, you wouldn't want to exclude the unborn, would you?

Potential customers.

One thing I find to be rather reprehensible is pushing religious beliefs onto children. They don't have access to the facts, to develop their own point of view. It's rather unfortunate.

 

[mantis]

Originally posted by Stevo
One thing I find to be rather reprehensible is pushing religious beliefs onto children. They don't have access to the facts, to develop their own point of view. It's rather unfortunate.

I agree, I was forced to go to church by my parents, had no say in what I believed, so when I had kids, I never talked religion to them, never sent them to church, if they want to believe in a religion, I want them to do it, because they want to, not because they have been brainwashed.

Fortunately, they both have decided that organised religions suck.

 

[BL4eva]

Originally posted by P_D
BL4eva, wtf is your problem!?!?
Haven't seen you post anything here except hate-driven religious spiel... why can't you let others believe what they want to believe instead of coming across as a try-hard hardcore poser with an 'anti-religious' stance...

Is it too hard to say nothing at all???

*And before you have a go at me, I'm athiest, but nothing ****es me off more than other people flaming others beliefs simply because they deviate from their own...

do u understand the meaning of the word "contradiction"?

 

[P_D]

Find me one post where I undermine you and your beliefs for being athiest... I may be just as equally flaming you as you are Christians, yet I do not undermine your thought and belief system,

I'm not ****ed because your opinion deviates from that of my own, thus I'm not contradicting myself...

but i don't undermine YOUR belief system for being an athiest do I??? It's all very well to be p*ssed at the fanatical Christians and such, yet I draw the line when you quote:

The bible is nothing more than fairy (pun NOT intended) stories for adults.

To me, that strikes at the heart of the belief system of all Christians.

As for...

god--is---an---imaginary---being----dreamed---up---to---control---you

'Your belief in this imaginary being known as "god" is proof that your ability to operate as a self-determined being is non existent

well, I guess that says it all.

As for editing ' ' to 'Gah'? Very constructive edit there

 

[P_D]

Anyway, back to the issue, what to tell the kid? I have nooooo idea... do they go to a religious school?

 

[BL4eva]

Originally posted by P_D
Find me one post where I undermine you and your beliefs for being athiest... I may be just as equally flaming you as you are Christians, yet I do not undermine your thought and belief system,

I'm not ****ed because your opinion deviates from that of my own, thus I'm not contradicting myself...

but i don't undermine YOUR belief system for being an athiest do I??? It's all very well to be p*ssed at the fanatical Christians and such, yet I draw the line when you quote:



To me, that strikes at the heart of the belief system of all Christians.

As for...





well, I guess that says it all.

As for editing ' ' to 'Gah'? Very constructive edit there

I have undermined no-one as i am just stating facts

 

[Red and Black]

You know im a Christian but i dont believe what Mooster said. There is nowhere in the Bible that says that eve had sex with satan and and had cain from satan. That is a made up fairytale and a lie. I think Mooster is from some weird religious cult unfortunately. Adam and Eve ate some fruit of a tree that God told them not to eat which them made them aware that they were naked. Before they didnt realise this because they were innocent and sinless. God made adam out of the dust of the earth and God formed Eve out of one of Adams ribs. As for their children marrying each other yes i guess it would have been incest in todays terms but since they wouldnt have had the problems back then because they had pure genes and stuff it would have been normal. The only way i can figure it is they wouldnt have thought it was wrong back then for the first generation. It is one of those things. The other thing is if anyone has studied how intricate the human body is and how it all works together you would think there was intelligence behind it. I mean the eye and the ear are examples if you study them how intricate they are and how they work most people would come to the conclusion that either its incredibly amazing or some creative being designed it. I personally believe in Jesus Christ and that God created the world through him as it says in the book of John in the new testament that Jesus Christ created the world before he was born as he came from heaven as the Son of God. He pre-existed to his birth to Mary. I also must say that Christianity is offensive to some people because Jesus Christ claimed and still claims to be the Son of God. Now the thing is you all have a free will to believe in Him or reject Him. However if you all know where your going to go when you die and have complete peace of mind about where you go when you die without believing in Jesus id be interested to find out what gives you that peace of mind as this is what gives me peace of mind about it. But back to the incest thing there is no easy way around it. The fact is the sons and daughters of adam and eve would have had to have married each other to continue the human race. Now Mooster also mentioned there was a race before the human race before adam and eve. Ive heard this theory and there may have been other peoples or whatever on the earth before the creation of man however humans didnt marry them. Although there were some fallen angels which did marry some women in the old testament it says in genesis which apparently is one of the reasons for noahs flood to get rid of all the people that were mixed and not pure humans anymore. Anyway its interesting stuff. The thing i dont get about evolution is to me it doesnt explain how everything works together so well. Men look at a beautiful woman and tell me there wasnt some sort of intelligent design behind her creation? I mean how could someone/something so beautiful just happen by pure chance? What are the odds? I think its more realistic to believe that there was some sort of intelligence behind it at least wouldn't you think? By the way this is just what I believe, everyone is welcome to believe whatever they want to of course...this is a free country or at least it used to be now its only partly a free country...but thats another story...for another day...

 

[Chiz]

Great post Red and Black. Best post on this thread by a long shot.

I disagree with Mooster too. It says in the bible that "Adam lay with his wife and she bore a son, Cain," so where this Eve had sex with Satan came from, I don't know.

With reference to your comments on evolution, I totally agree that something so beautiful must have had an intellectual designer behind it all. The creation of man and woman (is this is only a minor part of God's creation) says it all. What are the chances that two different beings who are so perfect for each other could have just happened by chance? Everything fits into place. If the earth is billions of years old as evolution predicts, then surely we would have died out ages ago.

In a few years, when scientists have come up with another wiz bang theory, people will be saying 'ha, they used to think we came from apes, what morons.'

Once again, top stuff on your first post Red + Black

 

[Stevo]

Originally posted by Red and Black
The other thing is if anyone has studied how intricate the human body is and how it all works together you would think there was intelligence behind it. I mean the eye and the ear are examples if you study them how intricate they are and how they work most people would come to the conclusion that either its incredibly amazing or some creative being designed it.

The thing i dont get about evolution is to me it doesnt explain how everything works together so well. Men look at a beautiful woman and tell me there wasnt some sort of intelligent design behind her creation? I mean how could someone/something so beautiful just happen by pure chance? What are the odds? I think its more realistic to believe that there was some sort of intelligence behind it at least wouldn't you think?

Now the thing is you all have a free will to believe in Him or reject Him. However if you all know where your going to go when you die and have complete peace of mind about where you go when you die without believing in Jesus id be interested to find out what gives you that peace of mind as this is what gives me peace of mind about it.

As I posted above, this is a very common argument for the existence of a creator god. It's also fallacious, which, of course, does not mean that there isn't a creator god, merely that this argument should not persuade us into thinking that there is!

The trap that people fall into is that they look at the complexity of humans, and then think "How did this happen?". Life on Earth began around 3.5 billion years ago, that's a long time for single cell life to form humans! Now, evolution is a very different thing to abiogenesis. Evolution is a fact, it occurs all around us. It is debatable what certain forms of life have evolved from, but the process of evolution is very strongly backed up by empirical evidence. Abiogenesis is a different story, and the mechanism by which a soup of hydrocarbons, amino acids, phosphates, among other molecules, could form life is still unknown. However there has been a lot of good work in this area recently, and I believe to the extent in which self-replicating amino acids have been synthesised. But it's a very contentious issue, and intelligent design is certainly not trivially pushed aside (although, it's looking increasingly unlikely). The Christian God does not seem plausible, although a theory which proposes that super-intelligent alien life with powerful genetic engineering technology planted the seeds of life on Earth is not entirely unreasonable.

As for your argument "What are the odds?", you have to recall the basic principles of statistical mechanics: Chemical and physical processes occur because they are likely to occur! So basically, over a very long period of time a long series of chemical processes have occured - with each individual step being quite probable - and we end up where we are today. It's not all that unfathomable.

Does anyone really know what happens when they die? I don't have peace of mind about death, but I think that's more due to having so much of my life ahead of me. In any case, it's not something that will persuade me to believe in Christ. Some things we just grow to accept, and I'm fairly sure that I will in time.

 

[Stevo]

Originally posted by Chiz
If the earth is billions of years old as evolution predicts, then surely we would have died out ages ago.

Why?

In a few years, when scientists have come up with another wiz bang theory, people will be saying 'ha, they used to think we came from apes, what morons.'

Of course, that's possible. But the evidence at this stage supports humans evolving from apes. Scientists do not make up stories and then manipulate evidence to make it fit the story!

It's like when people believed that the world was flat : We know now that the world is topologically described as a manifold, it is locally described as flat Euclidean space. But when the evidence mounted, we realised that it is actually spherical (or close enough to).

 

[Generalissimo]

Originally posted by Stevo
a theory which proposes that super-intelligent alien life with powerful genetic engineering technology planted the seeds of life on Earth is not entirely unreasonable.

But it answers nothing. All it does is shift the question of the origin of life onto a planet lightyears away where we can't get at it. The problem of how living beings can 'evolve' from inanimate molecules hasn't been tackled, except that now we are not asking how we came to be, but how the superintelligent aliens got there.