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Are we allowed to discuss religion yet?

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If the Romans had killed off the Jews back in the good old days we wouldn't have stupid religion arguments. The western world would be religiously tolerant and new gods and religions would be embraced and assimilated into society.

But tolerant Romans are tolerant and let the Jews practice their sectarian mono-deity religion hell-bent on converting everyone and smiting the rest. But nobody liked to be ruled by a foreigner so when a book written by a ragtag group of terrorists are mouthing off at Romans and declaring a holy saviour it gained traction in Asia Minor. It didn't even have a title it was just called 'book'. When the Roman Empire fell because of bad governance and dynastic feuding religious tolerance went out the window as the hot new religion based on the 'book' gained popularity because it promised salvation in troubled times. Fast forward a few hundred years and followers who weren't satisfied with this religion wrote another one claiming a new saviour and promised an even better paradise with more room for violence to boot.

Nowadays Christians and Muslims are flying planes and bombs into each others countries in a sectarian struggle that has lasted more than a millenium. What is even more astounding is that the two religions are spin-offs of the same thing! It's a truly fucked up world.

I heard this quote from somewhere that pretty much sums up the state of religion in the world:
"In a world without religion, bad people do bad things and good people do good things. Only religion makes good people do bad things."
 
cookie said:
the anthropic principle is the biggest load of bullshit ever: it's the ultimate example of confirmation bias. we only exist to observe that the universe's laws are fine-tuned for our existence because otherwise we wouldn't be here to observe them...
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It's logically sound, though, and works mainly as a way of pointing out the logical flaw in saying 'we exist in special circumstances therefore we must be special'.

It's merely saying that "We could not exist to observe a universe that did not have the suitable conditions for us to exist, thus it is unsurprising that the universe allows us to exist."
 
Brain said:
This being said, the vast majority of agnostic people I know are agnostic because they cannot "prove" that God does not exist and are not comfortable with outright asserting atheism. The kind of agnosticism you are talking about might exist, but I don't think it is common in practice.
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Thus the phrase "An agnostic is a polite atheist."

In a purely literal sense, an atheist is simply someone who is not a theist, i.e. has no positive belief in the existence of a god. That means that agnostics are a subset of atheists (as they do not positively believe in a god, but positively believe the question of a god's existence is inherently unanswerable).
 
Hipmonlee said:
whatever semantic differences you are aware of between the terms atheist and agnostic, I dont think people generally fit into your categories.
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Ah, I see. In all fairness I suppose the definitions of the terms I posted were pretty cut and dry, even though that's pretty much what they're supposed to mean by definition before personal perception is factored in.
 
Deck Knight said:
Dark Energy. A concept that in and of itself has more pretense of knowledge than any religion. It's basically an unknown factor X that has the properties and characteristics conducive to breaking all other laws of physics.
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The effects of dark matter are empirically measurable, through gravitational fluctuations in solar clusters and the detection of WIM particle annihilation. It does not involve breaking any law of physics, and it certainly does not require more pretense than the assumption that an all-powerful entity exists and that we are the only forms of life in the universe it cares about.

Moreover, dark matter is currently not nearly as well-accepted as other theories of cosmology (such as cosmic background radiation) precisely because it's so difficult to measure and quantify. That's the beauty of science - the theory has to fit the observations, as opposed to religion, where observations are forced to fit the theory. If something better comes along than "dark matter", physicists will be the first to accept it. On the other hand, when something better than "the earth and all its living creatures were created 6,000 years ago" comes along, well, what do you do?

Deck Knight said:
The Big Bang is the largest reaction in the history of the universe, but reactions can only occur if they have reactants, and based on the background radiation the telescopes have found, this would have needed to be a nearly impossibly large, impossibly powerful reaction.
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It's amusing that you speak to the scientific implausibility of the Big Bang when the plausibility of an entity capable of creating and controlling such an event is vastly lower. Your argument essentially amounts to "the big bang is really improbable therefore the universe must have been created by a vastly less probable being".

The interesting thing is that, just a few hundred years ago, we didn't really know how life could have come into existence either. And now we do. Who knows what we'll know about the universe in several hundred more years?

Deck Knight said:
Ultimately humanity must arrive at a moral truth, and that truth must take into account the weakness and terpitude of man. This truth emphatically denies atheism, for in atheism the inherent assumption is man is only limited by his own imagination and restricted only by equals, not superiors. The conclusion is always that some men deem themselves superiors, and eradicate those that disagree.
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The irony in this argument is rather staggering. Your assertion is that atheists, who view the world as full of equals, are more likely to engage in a campaign of systematic suppression than religious figureheads, who feel that they derive authority from a higher power?

The most violent acts in history were due to individuals following ideals "above" humanity, because the logical conclusion is that if a belief is greater than humanity, it must be greater than individual human lives.
 
Eyyy, where is Morm when you need him?

Dark Energy. A concept that in and of itself has more pretense of knowledge than any religion. It's basically an unknown factor X that has the properties and characteristics conducive to breaking all other laws of physics.
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The origin of the phenomenon responsible for gravity is still a mystery as well, and is essentially in the same area as the origin of dark energy and dark matter -- that is, speculation based on an as-of-yet unexplained phenomenon. Gravitons are not yet observed, and are essentially a placeholder for the gravitational interaction until they are discovered, discredited, or a better idea comes along. My point is that gravity is still observed. So is the acceleration of universal expansion. Ergo, dark energy still holds as a valid, if very very broad and therefore somewhat inefficient, explanation.
 
sonickid01 said:
Eyyy, where is Morm when you need him?



The origin of the phenomenon responsible for gravity is still a mystery as well, and is essentially in the same area as the origin of dark energy and dark matter -- that is, speculation based on an as-of-yet unexplained phenomenon. Gravitons are not yet observed, and are essentially a placeholder for the gravitational interaction until they are discovered, discredited, or a better idea comes along. My point is that gravity is still observed. So is the acceleration of universal expansion. Ergo, dark energy still holds as a valid, if very very broad and therefore somewhat inefficient, explanation.
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I've heard of dark matter in those Mario games...
 
dark matter was magus's most powerful tech in chrono trigger

you could argue that black hole is 'stronger' since it could instantly kill weaker enemies but come on man i'm pretty sure you don't want to add yet another stratum of potential bickering onto what is already a veritable beacon for the pugnacious
 
J-man said:
Just wanna point out to you flareblitz that Dark Energy =/= Dark Matter. Just sayin'.
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You are correct. Dark matter is more relevant to the big bang, which is why I posted about it specifically. The general point of the post applies to dark energy as well, however, as well as any other cutting-edge scientific theory (like string theory). Thanks for the observation though.
 
Lanturn314 said:
The bolded text is what I take issue with. Sure, you test your beliefs against the Bible, but who is to say the Bible is actually right? It was written approximately 2000 years ago by men who were completely ignorant of modern scientific principles, and their morals are similarly dated in both the Old and the New Testament(even Jesus was somewhat messed up... sorry for the format of presenting this, but I'm kind of in a hurry; I'll provide more examples later if you wish). There are so many contradictions in the Bible that it's ridiculous. So what makes you so entirely sure that it is the word of God?

If you say faith, then that's exactly the circular logic I'm talking about. If you say "well a lot of people believe it and have believed it for centuries so it MUST be true," you are making the mistake of thinking that popular belief=truth, when in fact they are unrelated. If you say that the contradictions in the Bible aren't really contradictions for some overly convoluted reason... your logic is probably off in some way, especially because there are some instances of discrepancies between things that really are mutually exclusive, even within the same book! So please, enlighten me in a logical manner on how I'm supposed to believe that the Bible is completely infallible... I'm listening.
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To be fair, I was responding to your previous claim that religious people just assume they're right about the universe and just fall back on circular arguments to back themselves up in terms of God's existence and nature. I was merely pointing out that not all of us are that way. Some of us do check our beliefs against something instead of just making them up as we go.

I completely understand how you have numerous reasons doubt the authority of the Bible. However, I've watched those videos, and countless others like them, read and considered countless claims of contradictions and historical and scientific errors, and have found no shortage of apologetic responses. Not even once. The vast majority of which only require the most basic understanding of the difficulty of translating an ancient language. Whether or not you'll personally accept each response is up to you, but any google search would suffice to show that they're out there.

So what makes me, and countless other Christians so entirely sure that it is the word of God? I'd say because we've read it, and done what it said to do, and it has done what it said it would. We've tried it and it works.

For all the talk of faith in Christianity these days, the Bible is a book that more often than not tells you to think for yourself and test it's claims. Some common examples:
Deut 18:21-22
I Thes 5:21
Mal 3:8-12
Acts 17:10-11


@Cookie, I respectfully think you misunderstood yeti. She was responding to the previous posts that basically said "The Bible cannot be true because the modern understanding of science disagrees with it's claims". Her argument was, essentially what you replied with, that the majority of what we know about the universe is theory, not fact. Therefore, there may not in fact be such a disparity.
 
Do this many people really go through school without learning the definition of "theory" in the context of science?
 
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