Except for original sin and all that. In Ireland they used to have the priest at the birth, with a bottle of holy water, to make sure the child was baptised as they came out of the womb to ensure they didn't go to purgatory.
Religion, what's the point?
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Except for original sin and all that. In Ireland they used to have the priest at the birth, with a bottle of holy water, to make sure the child was baptised as they came out of the womb to ensure they didn't go to purgatory.
I agree with what you are saying as of right now. I just have trouble using absolutes for what is and what is not, after death in particular. I do understand the subtle distinction (or maybe not so subtle if you are more intelligent than I) that you do not believe in something until it is proven while I chose not to completely rule something out because I don't have all of the pieces yet. I think that falls under agnosticism, I don't believe in god or unicorns but I don't rule them out completely despite being extremely improbable.
I think my point is that we don't know how things work after death so I am hesitant to discount anything
you're probably agnostic atheist then. remember that agnosticism and atheism isn't mutually exclusive.I agree with what you are saying as of right now. I just have trouble using absolutes for what is and what is not, after death in particular. I do understand the subtle distinction (or maybe not so subtle if you are more intelligent than I) that you do not believe in something until it is proven while I chose not to completely rule something out because I don't have all of the pieces yet. I think that falls under agnosticism, I don't believe in god or unicorns but I don't rule them out completely despite being extremely improbable.
I think my point is that we don't know how things work after death so I am hesitant to discount anything
Yeah I usually state that I'm agnostic with an atheist lean when discussing these things with others.
I don't believe in any religion, I was winding people up
It's remarkable how many Americans actually believe in the literal bible and young earth creation. I work with college educated people that actually think the earth is 6,000 years old. Hell, that fact that Ben Carson can go through medical school and choose to believe the literal bible is baffling to me.
I'm convinced sleepy time Carson is just trolling, no way somebody that is that well educated concerning how the brain works is that fecking stupid.
ok so what's doing good and evil, because those are some really vague terms.
Are they vague terms?. I thought it was pretty straight forward. Intentionally doing something that causes harm or distress to another person is in the vast majority of situations simply bad or evil. Doing something that assists or enhances anothers wellbeing is clearly doing good. I dont see this as being vague.
so believing in god is good or evil?
Well I cant answer that because I dont believe god exists.
see, I said earlier, "what about people who don't get a chance to find the christian god?" and the answer I got was that.
maybe he was trying to say that no matter if you believe in god or not your actions determine if you go to heaven or not. then why is there a need for god in the first place.
It doesn't negate the need for God, since obviously he's the one creating heaven and letting the 'good' people in in this case. However, it negates the need for organized religions and scriptures, especially the Christian ones
if (a big, big if) there is a benevolent god out there who lets people in based on their deeds while they were alive then he would have a point. right now there's no proof that such god exists, and even if it does exist by some miraculous chance such being exists there's little that connects it to the christian god.
even christians themselves are conflicted as to who's going to heaven and not; some say it's faith, some say it's the works (and the bible obviously contracts itself on the matter so that's no help). if they can't even agree on the most fundamental things about who's going to heaven and who's not, then good luck trying to convince atheists.
It seems that some people try to look for an explanation to justify their beliefs. Jesus didn't give the gift of faith to everybody.Therefore is a personal decision to try to find Jesus in your heart using the other gifts. The bible is considered a great tool in archaelogy for its historical reliability.
If you can't find Jesus and the meaning of his love reading the bible there are plenty of readings to try to find the spiritual sense to your existence.For me the bible was tedious but I find very interesting Maria Valtorta to understand how was the real Jesus,Fátima,Medjugore or some saints.If you doubt about God,look for him instead denying him sistematically because it doesn't fit in your schemes.For me the simetry and perfection of universe is a symbol of the existence of something else but as I said is a question of faith
If you can't find Jesus and the meaning of his love reading the bible there are plenty of readings to try to find the spiritual sense to your existence.For me the bible was tedious but I find very interesting Maria Valtorta to understand how was the real Jesus,Fátima,Medjugore or some saints.If you doubt about God,look for him instead denying him sistematically because it doesn't fit in your schemes.For me the simetry and perfection of universe is a symbol of the existence of something else but as I said is a question of faith
I'm not disagreeing with you. Those who take that position are by default deists. The Abrahamic God is not a benevolent entity and all 3 scriptures clearly demands his worship.
The modern bullshit of finding God through your heart/feelings started with the Romanticism movement in the 18th/19th century, with Rousseau, Goethe etc... leading the charge. Before that the Catholic Church spent more than a millennium justifying the existence of God through contemporary logic.
I would hope that everybody can justify their beliefs with explanation, because if they can't they should probably re-evaluate why they're believing it in the first place. Faith is an excuse that people give for believing something in spite of a lack of evidence. When myself and others in this thread say that there is no evidence whatsoever for God's existence for example, we are sometimes given the line 'that's why you need faith', as though this is a sound justification for believing in him. If it is indeed just a personal decision to find Jesus that has no impact on other people's lives, then perhaps those of us that don't believe would be less vocal. However, some have used (and continue to in some cases use) their beliefs as a result of following a certain religion to change/stop laws on topics such as gay rights and abortion.
I can't speak for the others here but I have not rejected the claim that God exists because it 'doesn't fit with my schemes'. I was raised without religion in my family and I have never seen any such proof that would force me to reconsider firstly believing in him, followed by a secondary leap to a particular faith. Your last line seems to lean towards an intelligent design argument. If 99% of life that has ever existed on this planet is now extinct then it raises the question of just how perfect this design really is. That is, unless the force behind it was either powerless to stop it or was quite content to see millions of species die off.
When/wherewere you taught biology/evolution/natural selection? Is this an elaborate windup that I'm not smart enough to get? A satire on the state of education?
EDIT: AAARGH. Turns out it was.
http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ResearchInterests.html
The longterm evolution experiment is very simple and really cool. It's not for the debate here but for anyone interested in learning about the strategies of adaptation it's a goldmine.
The longterm evolution experiment is very simple and really cool. It's not for the debate here but for anyone interested in learning about the strategies of adaptation it's a goldmine.
Crikey this thread is a humdinger!
Has anyone mentioned yet that if there is a God or a creator, he is almost certainly a scientist?
Has anyone mentioned yet that if there is a God or a creator, he is almost certainly a scientist?
That however is a non sequitur because if the Universe didn't function the way it does you wouldn't be here to wonder at it because the universe wouldn't exist or wouldn't exist in a way that allowed abiogenesis to occur followed by evolution resulting in intelligent life.
Douglas Adams had this to say about the potential consequences of thinking like this.
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
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I believe that our 'god' is actually Professor Brian Cox from an alternate universe.
They were actually working with their large hadron collider, trying to recreate the effects of the big bang and when they actually did it caused another big bang, 13.8 billion years ago. Their world was ultimately destroyed, but 13.8 billions years later, here we are. Praise D Ream!
They were actually working with their large hadron collider, trying to recreate the effects of the big bang and when they actually did it caused another big bang, 13.8 billion years ago. Their world was ultimately destroyed, but 13.8 billions years later, here we are. Praise D Ream!
That's a great quote, thanks.
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Religion and the human race are the root of all evil
I absolutely agree with you
This is a good question. I had this very same discussion with a fellow Christian. He said, "If you don't accept Christ personally, you cannot be saved." I know many fundemental Christian believe this. But I suggested that as Christ's death on the cross had saved all and so all who did good could 'cross the bridge' and be saved. Because faith without action is just lip service. I respected what he was saying but disagreed with him. Christ came not to condemn but to save all.
So basically ca. 280 five year-olds from Christian households from the U.S. and Canada were a bit meaner than their secular counterparts.
Doesn't this mean that non-religious children are meaner? As in, they give less of a feck if a human being harms another?
Less altruistic, more punitive and more judgemental. Yet religious parents were more likely than others to consider their children to be “more empathetic and more sensitive to the plight of others”.
Almost 1,200 children, aged between five and 12, in the US, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa, participated in the study. Almost 24% were Christian, 43% Muslim, and 27.6% non-religious. The numbers of Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic and other children were too small to be statistically valid.
Almost. It means the opposite of that.
Okay, I don't get the wording then. Muslim children judged interpersonal harm as MORE mean than their Christian counterparts. So, they think it's worse if human beings harm each other than Christians do.
And then it throws in that non-religious children are the least judgmental. So what does judgmental mean in this context? So poorly worded.
It's a pretty much useless study with a sensationalist heading but the secular brigades are loving it anyway.
Judgemental is defined as "having or displaying an overly critical point of view".
I've been to a fair few old world countries like Turkey. People "pushing and bumping one another" is almost a national pasttime. It's just as likely that these kids have visited their parents homeland and become inured to that kind of behaviour as anything else. You can't separate culture from religion in a lot of instances. It's pretty obvious these scientists are pushing an agenda. In fact, I feel uncomfortable just reading the conclusions they've come up with. These are kids, and their influences are obviously going to be much broader than their parents' religion.
So non-religious are the least critical about interpersonal harm of the three.
That still doesn't sound like a good thing to me. I get that they're more altruistic and aren't as punitive - these are good things - but not being overly critical about interpersonal harm slightly undermines what the article's title is saying.
How did you come to that conclusion?
If x group thinks interpersonal harm is meaner than the y group, why is it the opposite?
Probably a mad one and how dare he let the horrible things that happen here happen. Freaking scientists
I'm thinking that the study finding this is a bit of a giveaway.
That phrase isn't as clear as it could be as is trying to downplay that Muslim children and to a lesser extent Christian children were less empathetic and more punitive/judgemental - I suspect that phrase meant that they took their own hurt feelings more seriously than did secular kids. It could have been worded more plainly.
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Still don't get it. There are so many different Christian denominations, were they working with Catholics or Protestant? Also there were no Jewish kids to be found in the U.S.? No Buddhist and Hindu kids in China? What were the differences in responses between Arab and non-Arab kids? Not a single European country represented?