The Righteous and Religious Debate

posted on November 3rd, 2007, 11:07 pm

i kinda just realized that I have a 8-10 page essay due in like, 2 days and I really need to work on that instead, ok? I realize this looks bad, but i don't have time for this anymore 2day. It's been...interesting. Until later.

posted on November 4th, 2007, 1:08 am

Fleetops is for fun. Please leave religion out of here.
Not everyone is a Christian, nor does everyone find much difference in believing in God, or believing that he does not exist. Science itself is still adapting, and at each new discovery of Gas planets that can float on our oceans scientists find that the universe holds more wonders of which simple human-perception-governed science cares to take cognizance. One can "believe" that God exists or one can "believe" that God does not - in both cases people only choose a point of view to suit their own psychological/carnal needs. Neither can conclusively disprove the other.
Maybe when we have broken through the confines of our football shaped finite universe, and seen all that is out there, can we continue with the Hubris of this thread.
Otherwise it is just simple, and idle banter on a topic none of us here actually have the knowledge or acumen to fruitfully discuss.

Fleetops is for gaming. Please let's stick to gaming and enjoying here. For those interested in such intricate and controversial topics - visit Yahoo and chat there.

Now if we were to ask if we find the Borg ideals of oneness and lack of disunity to be admirable, or simply a deprivation of the basic uniqueness to which each living being is entitled, then hey, love to discuss that "morality" here. 

[ewm90]

posted on November 4th, 2007, 1:22 am

Last edited by ewm90 on November 4th, 2007, 1:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

You know one thing I have knotted is it relay hard to refer to some thing in a naive/positive way with out using morality such as "Good" "Bad" its posable but not easy. My self I am trying to reform the way I speak with out using t words that were made to talk about religion.

The problem with "Good" and Bad" is that they have such a broad meaning and are constantly miss under stood. Like if you tell a child don't do that its "bad" to do ____ they can easily and most of the time think they are talking about them as have bean bad. and to a child to be bad is the same as evil. evan to adult the world bad/good can be easily misunderstood.

___

About leaving religion out of here why? are people so sisative about belief that they cant even talk about it??

People are not frosted to participate in a thread and if the tread fallows the forum rules I don't see a problem.

[Dr. Lazarus]

posted on November 4th, 2007, 12:18 pm

Last edited by Dr. Lazarus on November 4th, 2007, 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Fleetops is for fun. Please leave religion out of here.

Fleetops is for gaming. Please let's stick to gaming and enjoying here. For those interested in such intricate and controversial topics - visit Yahoo and chat there.

That's why we have a small talk section. There's one in most forums, you should know that. "Anything goes", so on and so forth.

Not everyone is a Christian, nor does everyone find much difference in believing in God, or believing that he does not exist.

Yet another "statement" without backup. Who said this? I've never met a person for whom this issue is irrelevant. Here's my "statement": Whether or not you believe in a God (particularly the Abrahamic God) has profound implications. Why? Because if you conceded that he exists then you have to find out his will. This affects your choice of career, whether or not you have a family, etc. I wish people would stop making baseless statements.

Science itself is still adapting, and at each new discovery of Gas planets that can float on our oceans scientists find that the universe holds more wonders of which simple human-perception-governed science cares to take cognizance

I couldn't agree more. This actually demonstrates the sheer arrogance of the religious people in believing they've got it all figured out. Your sentence summarizes everything I've been trying to say for the past several months. I certainly don't have the answers. However, I'm trying to purge all of this simplistic, absurd nonesense and non-thinking that occurs as a result of siding with a world religion. What is more, I won't allow anyone to try to stop me.

One can "believe" that God exists or one can "believe" that God does not - in both cases people only choose a point of view to suit their own psychological/carnal needs. Neither can conclusively disprove the other.

I take exception to this, and frankly I find it insulting. My "carnal" and psychological needs tell me there is a God, and I want to be close to him. However, unlike our happy-go-lucky friends here on the thread, I am not fooled by my own sentiment. When I examine nature, with it's visious polar bears, creepy parasites and deadly diseases, I know that God didn't create all that, and that the Genesis account is absurd, and requires much faster evolution than any scientists would try to claim. When I read the bible, and I read about slaughter and nationalism as well as rape and other vulgarities, I feel disgust. When I read it's contradictions, duplications and mistakes, my intellectual faculties tell me that it's not inspired on God. So please do not tell me that I decided the Judeo-Christian God isn't there in order to satisfy a carnal need. It is that need I fight against, using reason. And reason wins everytime.

Maybe when we have broken through the confines of our football shaped finite universe, and seen all that is out there, can we continue with the Hubris of this thread.

Once again I agree unreservedly with your statement about our limited knowledge, and I think it's quite exciting actually. I think the whole planet should know that they don't need to believe in the horrors described in the bible, because reality is likely richer and more beautiful than they could ever imagine. The only "Hubris" in this thread comes frim those who declare that they're at one with a God that they do not even understand, and that may not even be personal or personable. Moreover, to take that theme further, they personify their deity because they are only capable of thinking in human terms. I view it as my life-long responsibility to get these people to expand their minds to other possibilities.

Otherwise it is just simple, and idle banter on a topic none of us here actually have the knowledge or acumen to fruitfully discuss.

Here's an example of idle banter: "Jesus died on the cross for me, I'm one with him, I'm sorry you don't see that, you can take it or leave it".

Such sentences result in a fruitless dicsussion because not only is there no evidence to support the statement, but the person has also insulted the "non-believer" by implying that the reason he can't see his point of view is because he's wicked or lacks "holy-spirit". The truth is that such an arguer demonstrates clearly that he doesn't have God's wisdom at all, and that he has about as much holy spirit as a bowl of cornflakes.

If you carefully read my posts you will see that they are not idle banter, and I challenge you prove your assertions. In fact I challenge everyone to back up what they say instead of just saying stuff in declarative form. Why do I keep asking that? Why is it that everyone states something in opinionated from, such as "it is like this" or "it is like that" without bothering to explain why?

So serpicus, I agree with certain things you have said, but you won't drive me away from here. I'd love to "leave religion out of here", the very word religion to me is offensive because of what it represents (division amongst many other things). However I feel compelled to speak out against the folly of simplistic superstitious nonesense, and I'll do so until someone comes up with a golden argument to prove me wrong. So far, nobody has even come close. My opponents don't even try to tackle the naturalistic, cosmological, scientific and logical arguments, because they know that to do so is futile. So all they do is spout off more emotional garbage.

posted on November 4th, 2007, 6:00 pm

... and I'll do so until someone comes up with a golden argument to prove me wrong. So far, nobody has even come close.

42

posted on November 4th, 2007, 6:42 pm

42

That's genius that is. I always knew you were a dark horse Smoerebroed.

I should point out that the above answer is, in fact, the best anyone's come up with so far. Quite sad really.

posted on November 4th, 2007, 8:18 pm

Well if some ones grow up in a room with no doers or windows haw do they know that they are in a room?

What I mean reality is a point of view that most people do not share the problem is that people don't see it as a point of view they see it as fact.

to further illustrate my point let me ask you what color it this forum? the answer may surprise you.

posted on November 4th, 2007, 8:40 pm

Urrrm, purply-blue with a black strip down the centre? 

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on November 4th, 2007, 9:35 pm

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on November 4th, 2007, 9:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[glow=red,2,300]We Apologize For The Inconvenience[/glow]c

posted on November 4th, 2007, 10:35 pm

Urrrm, purply-blue with a black strip down the centre? 

Its Green and orange our eyes convert the colors in to blue and red. Every thing is not as it seems every time we think we know a truth is disproved by some new truth. So for us to say three no god is a little silly if we cant prove it.

But it very in plausible that a creator with supper human powers control the fate of every thing is very very very unlikely.

[Dr. Lazarus]

posted on November 4th, 2007, 11:11 pm

Last edited by Dr. Lazarus on November 4th, 2007, 11:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree, our perceptions probably fool us more than we realise.

Science itself restricts itself to what's testable. The key to the scientific method is to try to falsify your own claims. Since  a God can't (yet) be subjected to this method, it's not possible to disprove that he's there.

Unfortunately the religious folk take this as being a 50:50 chance of God being there, when really the chance of the vengeful all powerful biblical God being there is minimal. Some atheists/agnostics have turned this into a joke by acting in the same way, and creating the Pastafarian religion on that basis (they worship His Sauciness the Flying Spaghetti Monster). You can't prove that their God is not there, so, he must be there, right? 

Bertrand Russell was making the same point when he made up his microscopic teapot orbiting mars scenario. According to the religious method, that must be there too. Trouble is it's very unlikely. Nobody has (yet) found any evidence!

As a good scientist, you never, EVER (pardon my capitals) assume somthing exists and then search for evidence to back it up. Truly intelligent reasoning operates in the opposite direction, and this protects us from believing something is there just because we want it to be there. That's why scientists falsify rather than the opposite. Unless something is completely untestable, in which case the issue is irrelevant. There's a big debate going on in String Theory about this at the moment.

posted on November 4th, 2007, 11:39 pm

um the FSM was a humoristic approach by a US citizen (a scientist, if I'm correct) to criticize the fact that some states in the US allow teaching of creationism @ school.

posted on November 4th, 2007, 11:47 pm

Yup, so really he's making the same point I described. It more or less goes like this: Creaionists want opposing viewpoints to be aired. Their viewpoint was reached via the reverse-scientific method I mentioned, so this guy simply did the same thing. Why doesn't his Flying Spaghetti Monster deserve equal teaching time? After all, we should teach "opposing views" (I actually thoroughly disagree with this, I believe that only scientific views should be given teaching time. If anyone wants to debate why creationism is unscientific, I can create another thread. Or just watch the last episode of DS9 season 1 for a similar situation and you'll see how absurd it is).

I saw a comic once where a priest in a Sunday Service started to teach about evolution in his church because "opposing viewpoints should be taught". Funny, but it makes a serious point.

posted on November 4th, 2007, 11:55 pm

what's the current status of the string theory?

posted on November 5th, 2007, 12:06 am

Until (very) recently, String Theory was a highly mathematical device for unifying the four fundamental forces of Physics, but its predictions could not be tested due to the enormous energies that would be required in particle accelerators. Right now there are one or two quite vague, but real predictions that might be testable in the Large Hadron Collider in spring 2008 when it comes online. Many experimental physicists are still highly sceptical though. To them, we still have no solid predictions from the theory, so in that case it's more of a philosophy than a science, so they think it's basically meaningless to discuss String Theory. Not wrong, just meaningless. This links in with arguments about deities.

The sort of "predictions" that might be testable in the LHC are for example supersymmetic particles, which are heavier counterparts of typical everyday particles such as electrons and neutrinos. If they are found, that would suggest that String Theory might be correct, but it would hardly be a smoking gun, as there are other theories in particle physics that also predict supersymmetry. It seems to me that experiment is still the best way to proceed: we look at the data and see what we can conclude, so we'll have to wait until spring. We can't (and shouldn't) turn centuries of tried and tested scientific methodology on its head. Although I must admit, String Theory has a certain appeal to it, and it is mathematically beautiful. Never trust your emotions though  .