Atheism

[waterwitch]

that's not what i mean...you can't tell them, "you're wrong" if they believe that god exists, can you? because you have no proof...no religion is right yet, no one can accuse someone else of having wrong ideas or beliefs...it'd be blatant hypocrisy if they could...

[Sethomas]

Well, I can very easily disprove the literalism of Genesis. That smites a theology system, doens't it? And I can apply Aristotle's theorem to disprove someone that says there is no god, can't I?

[Skulhedface]

Vibe: That's half the reason I haven't made a religious commitment yet, is because I don't know everything about everything regarding every religion. Sometimes I actually feel the faith itself is more important than what name you put on your faith.

Water: Some also argue that religion was more or less a primitive way of controlling the masses. Do you agree?

It makes sense, but there are also so many things that don't. Which is why religion is still prevalent. No one can, nor do I believe will they ever be able to, understand and know all the answers.

Seth: True in some cases, carbon dating has indeed disproved LITERAL creationism (i.e. Literal Creationism has Genesis taking place at 4400 B.C.) but there is no way known to man at this time to effectively prove it one way or another.

The reason I'm still without faith is because I refuse to take the easy answers. Just because someone THINKS they've figured it out doesn't necessarily make it so. "God created the universe" "No, asshole, the Big Bang did!"

I personally believe it always was, and always will be, and infinity IS a hard concept to grasp, and it's not quite an easy answer, but truly, how does humanity know? Short of being able to travel back to the exact moment, how will we ever know?

[waterwitch]

i do agree, but then again, i also agree that some questions like "why are we here?" and "how did the world come about?" can't be answered by science alone...although, there is also the idea of, if we can't answer them by science, should they be answered at all....

i'm of the opinion that they should...so, if humanity can't answer those type of questions, who or what can?

[Vibecrewangel]

And God said let there be light. And there was. (Please tell me if I have mangled this) And the big bang theory are words that describe the same event.

[Sethomas]

I never said that disproval of moot points can reject the existence of god, I was saying that it defrays a belief system. Thus making someone wrong on his stance of God, unless the question is watered down to "does He exist?" Classical logic suggests that god does exist, but in an indeterminable manner. I'm an avid Catholic, so I have a stance picked out, but that flow of logic is a personal one.

[waterwitch]

...a good and valid point..but what about all the other religions?

[waterwitch]

logic might point to the existence of God but science doesn't..science works on the basis that if it can't be proven, then it can't be...if there isn't any evidence, then it can't be true...so how then, can you explain God to a scientist?

[Sethomas]

Thank you for demonstrating what an idiot you are.

String Theory can't be "proven" because the particle accelerators necessary would have to be larger than the planet Earth, yet logic in the form of higher mathematics points that direction. Is it not science, then?

[Vibecrewangel]

In most of the religions I have looked into there is a story about the begining of the universe. All the stories have something to do with a lot of light and usually sound.

Same goes for a story about the flood.

There are others, but those are the two most common and obvious.

It just seems to me to be more about how each society percieved particular events.

[Vibecrewangel]

There is also quantum and chaos to take into consideration too.

[Vibecrewangel]

Here is a great story. Switch the Great Spirit to God, the tribe to the human race and the whale to Jesus and viola. This is the kind of thing that confirms my belief that the concept is the same, but language, society and environment alter the perception of the concept.

When the Great Spirit created this land, he made many beautiful and good things. He made the sun and mooon and stars. He made the wide land, white with snow, and the mountains and the ocean. He made fish of all kinds and the many birds. HE made the seals and the walrus and the great bears. Then the Great Spirit made the Inupiaq. He had a special love for the people and showed them how to live, using everything around them.

Then, after making all this, the Great Spirit decided to make one thing more. This would be the best creation of all. The Great Spirit made this being with great care. It was the Bowhead Whale. It was, indeed, the most beautiful and the finest of the things made by the Great Spirit. As it swam, it flowed through the ocean. It sang as it went, and it was in perfect balance with everything around it.

But the Great Spirit saw something else. He saw that the Inupiaq people needed the Bowhead Whale. Without the whale, it would be hard for them to survive. They needed to eat muktuk, the flesh of the whale, to keep warm and healathy during the long, cold nights. They needed its bones to help build their homes. They needed every part of the great whale.

So the Great Spirit gave the Bowhead to the Inupiaq. He gave them a way to hunt it from their boats covered with walrus hide. He made a special time each spring, when the ice of the ocean would break apart to form a road where the whales would swim. In that whale road, the Open Lead, the whales would come to the surface and wait there to be struck by the harpoons of the Inupiaq. They would continue to do so every year as long as the Inupiaq showed respect to the Bowhead, as long as the Inupiaq only took the few whales that they needed in order to survive.

But the Great Spirit decided this also. At that time each year when the Open Lead formed, when the whales came to the surface to be hunted, the Great Spirit made it so that a heavy cloud of thick mist would hang just above the ice, just above the heads of the whales and the Inupiaq. That thick mist would hang there between the sea and the sky. "Though I give you permission to kill my most perfect creation," the Great Spirit said, "I do not wish to watch it."

[waterwitch]

all religions have a creation story...AL religions have some way of explaining things that we can't....that's what they're there for...to answer those questions that we can't answer ourselves...

[Sethomas]

Religion isn't supposed to be a history or science lecture. Any that try to appear as such will fail, and thus can be said to be wrong.

[waterwitch]

you're just trying to prove me wrong here, aren't you?

[Sethomas]

Your ideas are flawed, and I've addressed them as such. For reasons beyond the discussion at hand, I find you painfully two dimensional. Thus arises my mild impatience your futile attempts to levy an argument. Forgive my transparency, then get interesting or fuck off.

[James]

I worship Pan; the goat God!

[VinceZeb]

Carbon dating has proved to be innaccurate in many occasions. Now, would you like to try again?

[waterwitch]

Pan rocks...one of the things he stand for is "sex"..now, any God that can be worshipped through sex doesn't sound too bad to me...

[Pub Lover]

Originally Posted by Sethomas

Fundamental Christianity is easy to disprove... just use carbon dating.

When I was young & intelligent I found that the way carbon dating was presented to me was by use of circular logic. :/
I wish I wasn't so aged & could remember the details.

Originally Posted by Vince

Carbon dating has proved to be innaccurate in many occasions. Now, would you like to try again?

It has been used inexactly, but the inaccuracies are not to the degree that would be required for your belief system to be functional.

[VinceZeb]

I'm sorry, but when carbon dating says some Viking artifacts are from the years 2130 and beyond, you know something is up.

[waterwitch]

pub and seth....he has a point...

[Vibecrewangel]

Religion uses circular logic as well. And some claim to be just as factual as science.

[kellychaos]

Originally Posted by waterwitch

that's not what i mean...you can't tell them, "you're wrong" if they believe that god exists, can you? because you have no proof...no religion is right yet, no one can accuse someone else of having wrong ideas or beliefs...it'd be blatant hypocrisy if they could...

I agree. That's one of the basics of logic. Beliefs are never wrong ... they just "are" ... period. The proof of the existence of God by Immanuel Kant, one of the most brilliant philosophers of metaphysics I have ever read, really amounts to saying that since God is part of the transcendental area of human thought which mankind's brain is not "formatted" to understand. The mind is supposedly governed by these transcendental maxims which form a matrix or framework for our logical thoughts. We, as people, are not meant to consciously understand these. Our understanding is in the empirical rrealm with which science deals. He proves his point by avoiding it really. It's one of the most disapointing parts of a life's work of philosophy which otherwise I truly admire. Another way to look at it would be in the way of a more or less vacuous proof. You can't prove that he absolutely doesn't exist so, until then, I will rely on my faith and say he does. That, to me, is sort of a "sitting on the fence" sort of cop out to me, though. I have more respect for a person of strong faith (whatever religion) than someone who's just hedging their bets due to fear of the alternative.

[Sethomas]

Carbon dating works on the simple assumption that the carbon 14 level in the atmosphere has remained unchanged in the past 50,000 years, and the rest is very basic math. There are ways for the data to be skewed, yes, but a good lab will know how to account for these factors. Because things like the Shroud were exposed to fire, certain things can be understood to fail by this method. That doesn't ruin its concrete logic for all instances.

Vince, I take it you don't believe in evolution. Did you know that we, as Catholics, are allowed to? Did you know that we're allowed to believe that Eden is a fable used just to convey the theology of original sin?