I wish people did not say "evolution" when they mean "natural selection". Back in my University days my evolutionary science course made it clear that pre-darwin most if not all the scientists (mostly devout christians) believed in evolution.
Darwin just altered the discussion by presenting a system that did not require the almighty. However those who attack and those who support the "natural selection" hypothesis keep using the buzz word "evolution".
"Evolution" is extremely difficult to deny based on the fossil record, "natural selection" however does have a few sticking points (I particularly dislike the ideas about "preadaptations"). Of course so does "intelligent design", but I have not studied it as much.
The real problem with natural selection is that it is taught not as theory but as fact. Thus it becomes a clashing point for the religious vs. the anti-religious.
Any therapod eating coconuts is just silly though, just like all the cretaceous dinosaurs in Jurrasic Park . . . but I digress . . .
Crom wrote:$25 million and that is all they could come up with? When there are like tons of creationists out there that are actually intelligent?
While I do not agree with this guy, he is obviously smart.
Man, and here I thought he was going to go and actually teach the audience something, and then he has to go and quote the Bible.
This is an intelligent design guy. He knows his science, and is intelligent but also has faith. He believes in evolution but also believes that a higher power had influence in the making of everything. I guess he is maybe comparable to the old school deists, the ones that founded the USA. They believed in a natural God, not a god from the Bible and that the Bible was pretty much all mythos.
He is the sort of guy that would say God did not create the T-Rex to eat coconuts, but rather set the framework for how life evolved. Which is sort of what the deists believe.
Kilkrazy wrote:
I have made it very clear in this thread that religion as mainstream as the Pope accepts evolution. I have also stated that nothing in the scientific theory of evolution denies the existnece of a Creator.
That cannot be taken as implying that religion is anti science.
YEC/IDs is anti-science. It denies the evidence for evolution, and wishes ID to be taught as a scientific theory.
So what you mean is Killkrazy 'doesnt understand what Intelligent Design is'.
To put it briefly Intelligent Design is a subset of creationism (I prefer to just say creationism and omit ID) that believes that God was a presiding force in creation and that evolution is a tool of creation.
This is fair and necessary if education is led to mean, 'this is evolution, this is where we come from and there was nothign else involved'.
Remove the atheist hijacking of evolution and you remove the need to teach intelligent design. You can teach ID as part of evolution simply by adding evolution is considered scientifically sound, people differ on opinions of the purpose of evolution. Some people think it is a truly random event sequence, other believe that a divine being or beings are overseeing the process.
People can add to this but that is the core of what creation through guided evolution/ID actually is. When it comes to interpreting Day-Ages etc that is theology, theology should not be feared and should be taught in schools preferably from a multi-point perspective. Howeever the core point is that ID and evolution are not at issues with each other unless you insist on atheistic evolution being exclusively taught.
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Element206 wrote:
Maybe its that whole IQ thing and the ability to rationalize creationism vs. evolutionism in an intelligent way.
Theology taught in school? Not on my tax dollar. Sorry but there's enough misinformation already outside of public schools. Maybe if it was taught in the same way that Greek or Norse mythology is taught, as a mythical explaination of the world by non-advanced cultures, I would accept it.
How does intelligent design see micro evolution then? Things like MRSA staph bacteria? Bacteria, that with in only the last 100 years has evolved to become antibiotic resistant, and done so at a very fast and effective manner? That is proof that evolution works, and it is not some sort of genetic mutation or anything like that. The creationists will claim, that is micro evolution, that exists, but macro evolution does not.
Guitardian wrote:Theology taught in school? Not on my tax dollar. Sorry but there's enough misinformation already outside of public schools. Maybe if it was taught in the same way that Greek or Norse mythology is taught, as a MYTH, I would accept it.
I don't think you pay taxes. I don't think you're even out of school yet...
Yeah wilkom to texas... where good taste was invented somewhere else. Whatever frazz. Why is Christian theology any different than teaching about the humans being created out of mud (and coincidentally also flooded for being bad, and then pitied and saved)? By the way 'easter' is a derivation of a Sumerian goddess of love and war 'Ishtar' who's festival just happened to be on the same day that our personal lord and savior died and resurrected. Hey there's only 365 days a year, it's perfectly reasonable coincidence. I happily learned that in school just as willingly as I would learn about Noah. Nice bait.
Guitardian wrote:Theology taught in school? Not on my tax dollar. Sorry but there's enough misinformation already outside of public schools. Maybe if it was taught in the same way that Greek or Norse mythology is taught, as a MYTH, I would accept it.
I don't think you pay taxes. I don't think you're even out of school yet...
Well..I do pay taxes..and I'd have to agree with Guitardian,I strongly support the separation of Church and State and would not want to fund "Religion" in public schools.
Crom wrote:How does intelligent design see micro evolution then? Things like MRSA staph bacteria? Bacteria, that with in only the last 100 years has evolved to become antibiotic resistant, and done so at a very fast and effective manner? That is proof that evolution works, and it is not some sort of genetic mutation or anything like that. The creationists will claim, that is micro evolution, that exists, but macro evolution does not.
no dude, that's because it's a punishment for gay people. God made germs able to get stronger. duh.
Guitardian wrote:Theology taught in school? Not on my tax dollar. Sorry but there's enough misinformation already outside of public schools. Maybe if it was taught in the same way that Greek or Norse mythology is taught, as a mythical explaination of the world by non-advanced cultures, I would accept it.
Perhaps this is why theological study is needed. There is so much ignorance flowing, people are taught crap by dodgy preachers and don't know enough to say hold on, your not doing it right. People are getting very agitated over foreign faiths they simply do not understand and are often deliberately misled over the nature of. And atheists fear that any exposure to knowledge of religious matters will turn them into drooling morons.
So much hype, so much fear, so much distrust.
Is this what happens when theology is removed from the curriculum in a nation?
Guitardian wrote:Yeah wilkom to texas... where good taste was invented somewhere else. Whatever frazz. Why is Christian theology any different than teaching about the humans being created out of mud (and coincidentally also flooded for being bad, and then pitied and saved)? By the way 'easter' is a derivation of a Sumerian goddess of love and war 'Ishtar' who's festival just happened to be on the same day that our personal lord and savior died and resurrected. Hey there's only 365 days a year, it's perfectly reasonable coincidence.
Every Christian holiday is a recycled holiday just like all Christian mythology and ideas have also been recycled. Many recurring themes and parallels are found across all major religions that ever existed.
Well..I do pay taxes..and I'd have to agree with Guitardian,I strongly support the separation of Church and State and would not want to fund "Religion" in public schools.
I would totally support any and all religious studies in public schools, as long as they were treated as electives, not required, and the school taught all religions. Teaching about a religion and preaching about a religion are two different things. I am all about education, and to be honest I would have taken religion courses if offered in high school. Of course I am a non practicing non believer, but I do find religion rather fascinating.
Crom wrote:How does intelligent design see micro evolution then? Things like MRSA staph bacteria? Bacteria, that with in only the last 100 years has evolved to become antibiotic resistant, and done so at a very fast and effective manner? That is proof that evolution works, and it is not some sort of genetic mutation or anything like that. The creationists will claim, that is micro evolution, that exists, but macro evolution does not.
no dude, that's because it's a punishment for gay people. God made germs able to get stronger. duh.
Well, I was sort of looking for a real answer, but lulz is always good
Kilkrazy wrote:
I have made it very clear in this thread that religion as mainstream as the Pope accepts evolution. I have also stated that nothing in the scientific theory of evolution denies the existnece of a Creator.
That cannot be taken as implying that religion is anti science.
YEC/IDs is anti-science. It denies the evidence for evolution, and wishes ID to be taught as a scientific theory.
So what you mean is Killkrazy 'doesnt understand what Intelligent Design is'.
No, what I mean is that ID is purportedly a scientific theory that an Intelligent Designer interferes in the world to create new species. It is based on the idea of Irreducible Complexity makes it impossible for complex organs and systems to arise through evolution. This idea has been refuted.
ID was invented by American YECs after their attempt to have their interpretation of the Bible pushed into science classes was defeated by a legal challenge. Another legal challenge defeated the attempt to have ID pushed into science classes.
I find certain facets of religion interesting in the same way I find Norse/Greek mythology interesting....and I see your point concerning "Religious studies" offered as part of a curriculum...
However,I doubt the topic of Christianity could be discussed in an "appropriate context" in public school,seeing it isn't viewed as Myth by some..but rather as Fact.
EDIT:...The same could also applied to any "Modern/Practiced" Religion.
Guitardian wrote:No man. Alternate viewpoints and possibilities than "because it was written" are what happens.
edit post too fast... this was at Orlanth's post.
You really think so. Half my time is spent dispelling what can best be described as 'atheist belt' Americans who believe what was 'written' about religious people. You are so afraid of narrow mindedness you become narrow minded. Its a recurring feature and a disturbing one.
Others follow the concept of not believing in God a lot better of course. However your above point doesn't put you currently in that category. Theology explores what was 'written' and what it means and other things besides, it does not fear what was 'written' no should/does it encourage unthinking obedience to it. Rglious education and religious dogma are two opposed forces, more so than religion and atheism. People fall for diogy preschers in the US because thety arent taught any better, and others believe that the dodgy preachers and their strange doctrines represent faiths they come to hate out of equal ignorance.
If you want to open your eyes to the world theology is a good place to start. students are exposed to things that are 'written' all the time, and are taught as correct, and are marked pass or fail dependant on their ability to absorb the knowledge within presented as fact. Theology taught from a multi faith viewpoint has built into it, you learn several different viewpoints often mutually exclusive ones, this in fact ensures rather than inhibits thinking for yourself. Subject material is still marked right or wrong from an individual perspective of the faith represented in the particular study but this only establishes an understanding of the materials provided, collectively they raise unavoidable questions as the components faiths in the curriculum are mtually exclusive and therefore must be assessed as such witn no real opportunity to blindly believe 'everything' one is taught.
I can answer sebs question regarding "aggressive" atheism.
Its defensive atheism.
I have religious friends, I wont go near a church cos it bores me, most of us (non believers) arent interested in rallys, placards, marches and fething.... non believer festivals. I think if your that sad you need a proper hobby.. like 40k or something.
But the reason I speak out is public policy. I would never dream of not sitting through Grace at a meal, or bowing my head when a believer prays, or any of the stuff that atheists get accused of doing, frankly I dont believe 99% of it. Most non believers are like me, you just happen to be one, your not an "Activist" who tries to spread the word of nothing.
But I feel I must open my mouth when it (religious belief) affects public policy and affects how my taxes get spent. Or if we go to war, you know, a big deal!
If the NHS are spending 80million a year on priests, I want to know why its not being spent on better medical care. If your schools are teaching nonsense, I want to know why. If I cant get a pint when i fancy one on a Sunday, your damn stright I want to fething know why. How is this aggressive?! Defending myself against unfair rules made by people who i have a different world view to?
I would leave them alone if they left me alone. But they dont. They bother me, they lobby parliament and knock on my fething door when im watching cartoons with a hang over. So we must speak. If they affect my life, than ill open my yap. I dont see how thats being "agressive" and i dont for a second believe thats the case. I believe that Religious people purposely do their best to be offended because they dont want to answer our questions, because they know their position is difficult to defend. If it made perfect sense, it wouldnt matter what people like me said about it, the truth would shine through undimmed, because the truth always come out in the end.
But thats not what happens. They are ultra easy to offend, ultra prickly, ultra defensive. And its because they cant disguise that fact that under a bit of scrutiny their religious belief is about as substantial as a merangue.
I am more than polite when im around a religious person, ill prey, ill kneel, ill say grace, ill even read the bible to stop ruffling anyones feathers. gak, Id even join in a carol service! But if they fethers are trying to bend me to their will, and force me to play by their rules, then I aint bending.
Guitardian wrote:Yeah wilkom to texas... where good taste was invented somewhere else. Whatever frazz. Why is Christian theology any different than teaching about the humans being created out of mud (and coincidentally also flooded for being bad, and then pitied and saved)? By the way 'easter' is a derivation of a Sumerian goddess of love and war 'Ishtar' who's festival just happened to be on the same day that our personal lord and savior died and resurrected. Hey there's only 365 days a year, it's perfectly reasonable coincidence. I happily learned that in school just as willingly as I would learn about Noah. Nice bait.
I'm sensing you have greater issues with Christianity than a couple of farmer Teds whining about them there schoolmarms teaching libber creationism instead of good old readin riting and rithmetic.
You've totally missed Orlanth's point and by that I think you're proving it.
Perhaps I am a bad guinea pig for this idea, as I have read lots of religious texts and minored in philosophy emphasis world religions a few years ago. It is because I have seen so many different yet just as implausible fantastical stories that I am convinced that it is all silly. I can understand teaching the bible, as well as I can understand teaching the Prose Edda or the Epic of Gilgamesh, but I cannot understand teaching it as factual.
If I have square holes, I will not be able to fit a round peg in them, no matter which color round peg I choose.
Guitardian wrote:Theology taught in school? Not on my tax dollar. Sorry but there's enough misinformation already outside of public schools. Maybe if it was taught in the same way that Greek or Norse mythology is taught, as a MYTH, I would accept it.
I don't think you pay taxes. I don't think you're even out of school yet...
Well..I do pay taxes..and I'd have to agree with Guitardian,I strongly support the separation of Church and State and would not want to fund "Religion" in public schools.
You're not. This is an issue to 15 losers, some religious wackjobs, and some nervous principals. Newflash to the world: Who cares? you're teaching teenagers. They're not even awake, much less paying attention.
Kilkrazy wrote:The NNS spending money on priests contributes to the well-being of religious patients, and is therefore properly justified.
I disagree, If they want a priest they should come for free. Or pay for it themselves.
I put a priest on par with a boob job. I think there are things that the NHS should be paying for and things they shouldnt. And a priest aint one of them.
Kilkrazy wrote:The NNS spending money on priests contributes to the well-being of religious patients, and is therefore properly justified.
I disagree, If they want a priest they should come for free. Or pay for it themselves.
I put a priest on par with a boob job. I think there are things that the NHS should be paying for and things they shouldnt. And a priest aint one of them.
If you believe the NHS should pay for things that promote healing, then you should be happy to pay for priests. They promote healing in religious people.
Your entitled to your opinion KK, its each to their own.
Do they though?! I thought the number one reason was to make them feel better before they pop their clogs! I mean, its not like they pray to heal cancer or regrow a leg or anything.. or maybe they do.
I also dont agree with homeopathy on the NHS, but, well there are a whole laundry list of things I dont agree with on the NHS.. but i think thats a new thread in the wings right there.
Overall I agree with what Matty posted, I don't have a "problem" with anyone's belief and will even participate in certain "Christian" events,even though I myself am a "non-believer".
I've enjoyed many discussions concerning God and the Saints chances to go to the Superbowl with a wonderful Parish Priest back home...and it turned out he was spot on about the latter.
However,I freely admit to having a huge problem with religion when it interferes with/effects my life...both in the political and private capacity.
When I find myself engaged in a debate with an individual who tells me that my 40k minis "Invite demons into my home". (and yes that has happened twice)...then I just have to shake my head and laugh.
mattyrm wrote:I can answer sebs question regarding "aggressive" atheism.
Its defensive atheism.
I have religious friends, I wont go near a church cos it bores me, most of us (non believers) arent interested in rallys, placards, marches and fething.... non believer festivals. I think if your that sad you need a proper hobby.. like 40k or something.
But the reason I speak out is public policy. I would never dream of not sitting through Grace at a meal, or bowing my head when a believer prays, or any of the stuff that atheists get accused of doing, frankly I dont believe 99% of it. Most non believers are like me, you just happen to be one, your not an "Activist" who tries to spread the word of nothing.
But I feel I must open my mouth when it (religious belief) affects public policy and affects how my taxes get spent. Or if we go to war, you know, a big deal!
If the NHS are spending 80million a year on priests, I want to know why its not being spent on better medical care. If your schools are teaching nonsense, I want to know why. If I cant get a pint when i fancy one on a Sunday, your damn stright I want to fething know why. How is this aggressive?! Defending myself against unfair rules made by people who i have a different world view to?
I would leave them alone if they left me alone. But they dont. They bother me, they lobby parliament and knock on my fething door when im watching cartoons with a hang over. So we must speak. If they affect my life, than ill open my yap. I dont see how thats being "agressive" and i dont for a second believe thats the case. I believe that Religious people purposely do their best to be offended because they dont want to answer our questions, because they know their position is difficult to defend. If it made perfect sense, it wouldnt matter what people like me said about it, the truth would shine through undimmed, because the truth always come out in the end.
But thats not what happens. They are ultra easy to offend, ultra prickly, ultra defensive. And its because they cant disguise that fact that under a bit of scrutiny their religious belief is about as substantial as a merangue.
I am more than polite when im around a religious person, ill prey, ill kneel, ill say grace, ill even read the bible to stop ruffling anyones feathers. gak, Id even join in a carol service! But if they fethers are trying to bend me to their will, and force me to play by their rules, then I aint bending.
And again, before you went off on your tangent, thats not happening and its also not relevant to the actual topic.
you don't just pull out the bloodthirster and show them they are right Fritzz?
Hey Relevancy police: I think the perception of atheists view on teaching non-factual things as fact is pretty relevant. I agree with Mattrym, and it is perfectly relevant. The only ones in any position to question religious teachings without bias are the non-religious.
Guitardian wrote:you don't just pull out the bloodthirster and show them they are right?
I never thought of that..
Actually it was a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh that I was painting that started the whole discussion...apparently,according to the individual I was talking with,the "graven image of a demon invites daemon to enter your home and posses you."...I guess you learn something new every day.
mattyrm wrote:I can answer sebs question regarding "aggressive" atheism.
Its defensive atheism.
OK. I accept that, because this goes both ways you know. So it would be wrong for me not to.
mattyrm wrote:
I have religious friends, I wont go near a church cos it bores me, most of us (non believers) arent interested in rallys, placards, marches and fething.... non believer festivals. I think if your that sad you need a proper hobby.. like 40k or something. But the reason i speak out is public policy. I would never dream of not sitting through Grace at a meal, or bowing my head when a believer preys, or any of the stuff that atheists get accused of doing, frankly i dont believe 99% of it. Most non believer are like me, you just happen to be one, your not an "Activist" who tries to spread the word of nothing.
I am more than polite when im around a religious person, ill prey, ill kneel, ill say grace, ill even read the bible to stop ruffling anyones feathers. gak, Id even join in a carol service! But if they fethers are trying to bend me to their will, and force me to play by their rules, then I aint bending.
Sounds like you try your best to be civil.
mattyrm wrote:
But i feel i must open my mouth when it (religious belief) affects public policy. If the NHS are spending 80million a year on priests, I want to know why its not being spent on better medical care. If your schools are teaching nonsense, i want to know why. If i cant get a pint on a Sunday, your damn stright I want to fething know why.
The 80 million on priests is fair and makes sense. Many people die in hospital now Matty, and many of them think about their future before their end. The figure sounds plausible allowing for the number of religions the NHS will try and cater for. I doubt much (if any) of the cost is salary for priests, most priests are priests elsewhere too, transport organisation etc those cost. I bet most of that money goes on tiers of managers that could be knocked into a a database and a handful of clerks who can call out priests on the network as needed. You shoukld be riling at the inefficiency of the NHS not that they see fit to call out priests. Even taking an atheistic state perspective, so long as a religious preference is not out and out banned then providing access to priests to comfort the dying and lonely helps. I am sure that humanist speaker can be provided out of that funding for people who don't believe they are going anywhere but don't want to be alone when they face the void. In some cases this is important, a Moslem is expected to profess Allah with their last breath, a Catholic is encouraged to make a final confession and absolution. This is important to them, and their families, and should not be denied just because you dont like the idea.
Is this hospital care? Yes I think it is?
mattyrm wrote:
I would leave them alone if they left me alone. But they dont. So we must speak. If they affect my life, than ill open my yap. I dont see how thats being "agressive" and i dont for a second believe thats the case. I believe that Religious people purposely do their best to be offended because they dont want to answer our questions, because they know their position is difficult to defend. If it made perfect sense, it wouldnt matter what people like me said about it, the truth would shine through undimmed, because the truth always come out in the end.
We cannot account for everyone who believes, but many of these people are frightened, some with good reason. New Labour shafted the church a lot, and shafted church schools out of misplaced secularism. a lot of people notice this and get defensive. It took a long time to clamp down on militant Islam, some churches got clamped down on simply for being too big, mostly pentecostal churches. I remember one the Acton Tabernacle, seats 3000 and usually full, run as an offshoot of Kensington Temple, a pentecostal church. It got shut down, government removed license of use from the place after two years. No extremism, they were just too big for them to handle. This was in early 2001 when al-Mouhajiroun was in full flow and doing all the funky shi'ite, and getting away with it. 'Jesus is lord' = shut them down there are too many, 'Kill the Infidel' = its nice to have multi culturalism.
Camerons lot are far less aggressive, they dont have the anti-church dogma New Labour had, but there is still a lot of tension because the civil service was New Labourised and it will take some time to neutralise that. It doesnt help that Blair practiced lay investiture, putting wishy washy yes men into every bishop position that came available. This above else has been noticed in the churches and has some worry. Moves were underway to try and eliminate the CoE schools on no stronger grounds than a dogmatic belief in secularising everything to be 'fair' and I think you understand New Labours definition of fair.
Poking at the churches especially over the last decade has been like throwing rocks at a castle under siege, the reaction is noticed over the reason for the reaction.
mattyrm wrote:
But thats not what happens. They are ultra easy to offend, ultra prickly, ultra defensive. And its because they cant disguise that fact that under a bit of scrutiny their religious belief is about as substantial as a merangue.
Now now Matty, some of us can handle a it, some find it more difficult. Will atheists leave some person alone who loves God (pick one) but doesn't understand much about science or is a poor debater. Not everyone is a silver tongued apoliogist the likes of CS Lewis, yet often the attacks come in thick and fast with no room to parry, whether you are or not. Mostly its points scoring, but faith is for anyone and many just cant handle the dialogue well.
Guitardian wrote:I guess gargoyles on churches don't count though.
Evidently not...however,the "church" the individual attends looks less like a "church" and more like a sports stadium...no gargoyles on the roof there.
Apparently this is a common belief amongst her congregation,which I've heard is somewhere around 6,000 people.
I saw a Tyrannosaurus skeleton last week at the chicago Field Museum. Its as long as a bus and it's arms are about the same size as mine. Obviously a flaw in either god or evolution there.
As always Orlanth I am happy to discuss the issue with you because your sensible, and i fully agree with regards NU-Labs bizarre anti Church sentiments, and I really do like singing carols whenever we had our obligatory Christmas service, but I will have to retort more fully in the morning cos im off to bed.
Guitardian wrote:I saw a Tyrannosaurus skeleton last week at the chicago Field Museum. Its as long as a bus and it's arms are about the same size as mine. Obviously a flaw in either god or evolution there.
At the San Fran museum when you walked through a doorway there was an Allosaur RIGHT THERE reaching for you. You got to see the 8 inch claws up close - kind of a "here's what your last moment would look like if you teleported back in time" way cool. Besides, according to Calvin and Hobbes, they can fly F15s. You don't with multiton predators they can blast you at Mach 2.5.
KK, i know exactly what the placebo affect is, and ive read studies about patients being given sugar pills in place of medication and the facts being taken down, but surely thats not the same thing is it? I mean, it may work with a pill that is intended to be medication, but the priests dont go in and say "we can make you better with God" they go in to make them feel better mentally, not cure them of their illness, as they still use conventional medicine right?
Guitardian wrote:I saw a Tyrannosaurus skeleton last week at the chicago Field Museum. Its as long as a bus and it's arms are about the same size as mine. Obviously a flaw in either god or evolution there.
Labeling a derived characteristic as a "flaw" is a very 1800's way of going about things. The reason Tyrannosaurids had such reduced forelimbs at the adult state was because their bodies grew proportionately larger than other Coelurosaurids. A juvenile T. rex would have looked very similar to a Dromaeoraurid (or a "raptor", for those of you getting your education from Hollywood), but as it grew up, its body and skull would have increased in size, while its arms would stay small. It wasn't a problem, you see, because their mouths were very large, had incredibly strong muscles attached to them, and their teeth could be replaced if lost, like a modern-day Crocodile.
Kilkrazy wrote:Making someone feel better mentally helps them physically.
That is true, and a lot will be placebo. But I don't think its the primary role of the priests. Priests are there first and formost for the non emergency terminal cases. Emergency cases are covered in doctors, trying to save them, but there comes a time when people can only be 'made comfortable' and are left alone with a nurse checking in intermittently, a priest is often part of that process.
To be harsh you could say its placating the relatives, by ensuring that their particular religious terminal rites were observed properly , so they don't kick off.
Guitardian wrote:I saw a Tyrannosaurus skeleton last week at the chicago Field Museum. Its as long as a bus and it's arms are about the same size as mine. Obviously a flaw in either god or evolution there.
Labeling a derived characteristic as a "flaw" is a very 1800's way of going about things. The reason Tyrannosaurids had such reduced forelimbs at the adult state was because their bodies grew proportionately larger than other Coelurosaurids. A juvenile T. rex would have looked very similar to a Dromaeoraurid (or a "raptor", for those of you getting your education from Hollywood), but as it grew up, its body and skull would have increased in size, while its arms would stay small. It wasn't a problem, you see, because their mouths were very large, had incredibly strong muscles attached to them, and their teeth could be replaced if lost, like a modern-day Crocodile.
Yeah but it didn't evolve a rocket launcher, and god din't gift it with the ability to make one. I bet I could still take him in armwrestling.
Element206 wrote:The most humorous part of this protest is the fact that Rich People are targeted....as if being poor white trash automatically buys you a ticket to heaven. I guess sacrificing for an education, wanting to have something beyond a 3rd grade reading level, and being successful in life is a sin?
The bible is pretty specific about wealth, and that the poor are it's special people.
Needles, camels, rich men and eyes, all that stuff.
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Orlanth wrote:So what you mean is Killkrazy 'doesnt understand what Intelligent Design is'.
No, Killkrazy's definition was fine.
The problem here is that you're inventing your own definition of intelligent design to fit an idea you like, but that isn't what it means. Intelligent design refers specifically to the idea that there is irreducible complexity in organisms that cannot be accounted for random mutation.
It was developed by groups looking for a new approach to addressing the teaching of evolution in school. I explained this my earlier post to you, with references to the specific legal cases involved, but you didn't respond.
To put it briefly Intelligent Design is a subset of creationism (I prefer to just say creationism and omit ID) that believes that God was a presiding force in creation and that evolution is a tool of creation.
That's called guided evolution and similar terms. It is not intelligent design.
Remove the atheist hijacking of evolution and you remove the need to teach intelligent design.
There's no atheist hijacking of atheism. That's a fantasy. Highschool biology class doesn't end the lesson on evolution with the statement 'and all this proves there is no God'.
You can teach ID as part of evolution simply by adding evolution is considered scientifically sound, people differ on opinions of the purpose of evolution. Some people think it is a truly random event sequence, other believe that a divine being or beings are overseeing the process.
No, you just don't mention of that at all. Science doesn't, and can't, form any opinion on whether there is any kind of purpose to it all. It doesn't, and can't, form an opinion on whether mutation is truly random of guided by some kind of creator.
So none of those things should be mentioned in science class at all. At most, because of the invented contraversy, a science teacher should explain that evolution is a study of the natural processes by which animals evolve over time, and that it doesn't in any way address spiritual questions of any nature, and that an understanding of evolution is in no way opposed to religious belief.
If it is god's plan for evolution to work the way it does then so be it. God also evidently made me sneeze just now too, which blew some dust which triggered a reaction and livened up some microscopic stuff that will one day take over and enslave us all once it evolves enough. Free will did not make me sneeze, and everything is either free will or god's will, including evolution right?
Whether or not there is a god or that said god has a plan for evolution does not make ouija boards or ranting madmen or magical apples any more or less believable though. I can say "yes" to intelligent design at its premise, all the while still knowing that I don't and can't really know, and all the while still saying "heck no" to all of the specific tenets of any faith that tries to expand past that.
Evolution does not suffer a boon or a blow from atheism, it is just the most rational conclusion of observations made so far. It does get challenged however, and ludicrously, by some religious dogma and young earth nonsense which, despite all evidence, insist upon trying to reshape hard facts around the unquestionable 'truth' of their sacred book.
Atheism is not attacking religion with evolution by criticizing young earthers and such, it is just shaking its head at obvious falacies.
Element206 wrote:The most humorous part of this protest is the fact that Rich People are targeted....as if being poor white trash automatically buys you a ticket to heaven. I guess sacrificing for an education, wanting to have something beyond a 3rd grade reading level, and being successful in life is a sin?
The bible is pretty specific about wealth, and that the poor are it's special people.
Needles, camels, rich men and eyes, all that stuff.
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Orlanth wrote:So what you mean is Killkrazy 'doesnt understand what Intelligent Design is'.
No, Killkrazy's definition was fine.
The problem here is that you're inventing your own definition of intelligent design to fit an idea you like, but that isn't what it means. Intelligent design refers specifically to the idea that there is irreducible complexity in organisms that cannot be accounted for random mutation.
It was developed by groups looking for a new approach to addressing the teaching of evolution in school. I explained this my earlier post to you, with references to the specific legal cases involved, but you didn't respond.
To put it briefly Intelligent Design is a subset of creationism (I prefer to just say creationism and omit ID) that believes that God was a presiding force in creation and that evolution is a tool of creation.
That's called guided evolution and similar terms. It is not intelligent design.
Remove the atheist hijacking of evolution and you remove the need to teach intelligent design.
There's no atheist hijacking of atheism. That's a fantasy. Highschool biology class doesn't end the lesson on evolution with the statement 'and all this proves there is no God'.
You can teach ID as part of evolution simply by adding evolution is considered scientifically sound, people differ on opinions of the purpose of evolution. Some people think it is a truly random event sequence, other believe that a divine being or beings are overseeing the process.
No, you just don't mention of that at all. Science doesn't, and can't, form any opinion on whether there is any kind of purpose to it all. It doesn't, and can't, form an opinion on whether mutation is truly random of guided by some kind of creator.
So none of those things should be mentioned in science class at all. At most, because of the invented controversy, a science teacher should explain that evolution is a study of the natural processes by which animals evolve over time, and that it doesn't in any way address spiritual questions of any nature, and that an understanding of evolution is in no way opposed to religious belief.
Also, I like George Carlin's view:
THANK YOU FOR NOT VIOLATING THE RULES BY EMBEDDING A PICTURE OR IMAGE CONTAINING PROFANITY. HOWEVER IF YOU ARE GOING TO LINK TO ONE, YOU NEED TO PROVIDE A NSFW LABEL. PLEASE OBSERVE THIS RULE GOING FORWARD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o
What I think most people fail to recognize about this whole creationism/ID v. atheism/science arguement is that the most vocal participants are a small minority on BOTH sides.
It isn't all atheists v. a small minority of religious wackoes, and it's not all religious people v. a small minority of rabid atheists.
It's a small minority of atheist nutjobs v. a small minority of religious nutjobs. The rest of us really aren't all that concerned about pushing our beliefs, or lack thereof, on others.
rubiksnoob wrote:What I think most people fail to recognize about this whole creationism/ID v. atheism/science arguement is that the most vocal participants are a small minority on BOTH sides.
It isn't all atheists v. a small minority of religious wackoes, and it's not all religious people v. a small minority of rabid atheists.
It's a small minority of atheist nutjobs v. a small minority of religious nutjobs. The rest of us really aren't all that concerned about pushing our beliefs, or lack thereof, on others.
Word. As I noted, this is all about telling this to teenagers. Who cares? They sure don't.
My personal opinion is that although a supremem being(s) exists, said supreme being(s) simply have much more important things to care about than the prayers of some puny little human. Of course, I have no evidence for this position, only my personal beliefs.
Still, it's really fun to stand in the middle of a group of people yelling "you're going to hell" in a megaphone with a sign that says "nah, he's just kidding" while giving people hugs and candy Counter-protests ftw!
sebster wrote:
The bible is pretty specific about wealth, and that the poor are it's special people.
Needles, camels, rich men and eyes, all that stuff.
Good argument for teaching theology is schools then. Because you have a very thin explanation of the Biblical teaching.
sebster wrote:
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Orlanth wrote:So what you mean is Killkrazy 'doesnt understand what Intelligent Design is'.
No, Killkrazy's definition was fine.
The problem here is that you're inventing your own definition of intelligent design to fit an idea you like, but that isn't what it means. Intelligent design refers specifically to the idea that there is irreducible complexity in organisms that cannot be accounted for random mutation.
Your long winded definition is the same as evolution with God not excluded. The idea simply put that 'we believe evolution isn't random but planned' explains evolution as well as randomness can because the 'designer' touch is non-detectable. It still remains a religious answer. The idea that randomness is guaranteed is also a religious answer because it is attributed within the system as atheism.
A neutral response would be to say that evolution does not disprove the existance of God and is not inherently atheistic.
Lawsuits get in the way of that because of dogmatic legislation regarding mentioning religious topics in the classroom. Consequently atheism is the only religious choice that gets a hearing, because even if the teacher is themselves teaching neutrally atheism will be attached elsewhere with impunity.
sebster wrote:
It was developed by groups looking for a new approach to addressing the teaching of evolution in school. I explained this my earlier post to you, with references to the specific legal cases involved, but you didn't respond.
Because its a needless side issue. The legalese aspect is that ID was rejected in a test case because it was another variant of creationism. This is correct in my view because IDis creationism. The dogma within the US legal system, places and unfair divider on religious teaching, ignoring the fact that evolution has been hijacked by atheism. ID is an attempt to restore a balance because atheism is taught in the classrooms veiled as science.
sebster wrote:
To put it briefly Intelligent Design is a subset of creationism (I prefer to just say creationism and omit ID) that believes that God was a presiding force in creation and that evolution is a tool of creation.
That's called guided evolution and similar terms. It is not intelligent design.
Take a closer look its the same thing. I dont like ID because it soils the topic, its all creationism. ID/guided evolution/Day Age creationism/neo-creationism they are all the same at the root, and it is this relgious root that is the point at which it is attacked and the sole point that matters. ID is an attempt to get past the legal loopholes that allow atheism to be proliferated in schools in the US without right of response. Frankly I wish it would go away and creationism can remain to do what its there to do: A point by which someone can reasonably say 'I believe' Gos is in control, now without discrimination from a pseudo-scientific argument for the non-existance of God. Even Dawkins cant disprove the existance of God, and we know he would like to if he could, best he can do is wave a hand and call all religious people deluded. Now there is a religious fanatic if ever I saw one.
sebster wrote:
There's no atheist hijacking of atheism. That's a fantasy. Highschool biology class doesn't end the lesson on evolution with the statement 'and all this proves there is no God'.
No, you just don't mention of that at all. Science doesn't, and can't, form any opinion on whether there is any kind of purpose to it all. It doesn't, and can't, form an opinion on whether mutation is truly random of guided by some kind of creator.
Point explained earlier, the teacher does not need to, science does not need to. Atheism hijacks the message with no right of reply within the schools system. Atheists get away with this by relying on the myth that atheism isn't a religion and can thus be propogated within the schools system.
I have been persistent on the point in several threads: atheism hijacks evolution, if you think its a buddy buddy relationship look up hijacking in a dictionary. Science is neutral, atheism is religion. The US education laws need a clean up in order to be fair and effective. Frankly this is one dogma we dont have over here.
The US needs to learn not to fear religious eduction, from a multi-point perspective. Do this and you will find dodgy preachers starved of dupes to recruit, and reduced counts of dogmatic ignorance from various fanatics, including atheist ones.
I am pretty sure that european relgious education is the reason we dont have a Bible belt problem, or a lot of militant atheism in the education system.
It's not perfect, in the Uk we do have some problems with relgious education but those are mostly due to ethnic divisions. I know a few teachers and they have great problems getting a certain group to attend or respect teaching on any religious matter except Islam, and that is putting it mildly. Any non Islamic mention, including Christmas I might add, causes the kids and their parents to kick off nastily, and its not a one off but a persistant obstacle. Although this is in Luton, which is pretty much a worst case scenario, by and large the system works. Anyway that is a problem that goes beyond eduction to solve.
I don't know about these days, but when I was at school we had Divinity or Religious Education classes. That is the correct place to be taught comparative religion. I remember it being all Christianity actually.
Religion deals with the supernatural world. Church is the place to be taught your own religion.
Science deals with the natural world, not the supernatural world. Science classes are the place to be taught science.
rubiksnoob wrote:It's a small minority of atheist nutjobs v. a small minority of religious nutjobs. The rest of us really aren't all that concerned about pushing our beliefs, or lack thereof, on others.
Asking that evolution is taught in schools and not creationism isn't about pushing beliefs upon others. To describe it as a minority of 'atheist nutjobs' is quite ignorant. Many people concerned about creationism in schools are academics and professionals working in science and education, regardless of their religious belief or lack of it, they aren't promoting atheism or religion, they are promoting the teaching of *fact*.
Evolution isn't a belief, it's factually correct as demonstrated by actual evidence. It's not a commentary on religion. Creationists attempt to paint evolution as being an 'atheistic belief' mainly so they can claim their 'religious belief' is and equally valid alternative and deserves equal attention.
That evolution is taught in science class is not a matter of a popularity contest between theists and atheists but because it is actual verifiable science. Promoting evolution is not pushing beliefs or lack of beliefs on anyone, it's about concentrating on teaching things that are scientifically and factually accurate in schools, instead of devoting valuable class time to nonsense theories just to appease certain religious groups and filling kids heads with conflicting and ignorant nonsense.
My personal opinion is that although a supreme being(s) exists, said supreme being(s) simply have much more important things to care about than the prayers of some puny little human. Of course, I have no evidence for this position, only my personal beliefs.
God does heal amputees, but believing in something like that is intensely difficult, believing in even curing a cancer or to raising the read is a lot easier frankly.
From what I know there is only one recorded incidence of a limb replacement and that was via a famous 19th century evangelist called Smith Wigglesworth.
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Kilkrazy wrote:
Religion deals with the supernatural world. Church is the place to be taught your own religion.
Science deals with the natural world, not the supernatural world. Science classes are the place to be taught science.
I would heartily agree, but can you keep atheism from the science classrooms? even commentaries as slender as 'evolution is not a religious subject, it makes no statement on religious beliefs for or against the existence of divine beings or passes comment whether divine beings have control over the universe.'
This is fair non-faith specific and not focused on any one faith or faith groupings. I can bet atheists would holler blue murder in the states over it because lawyers can argue even that comment is inherently 'religious'.
It seems to me that you are wildly speculating in order to build a case for the inclusion of religion in schools.
The only reason that people make statements like 'evolution is not a religious subject, it makes no statement on religious beliefs for or against the existence of divine beings or passes comment whether divine beings have control over the universe', is because religious people keep trying to force religion into the science classroom in the guide of Intelligent Design, on the basis that it should be taught alongside evolution as a scientific theory.
The quotation is not an atheist statement anyway. Comment is not inherently religious.
I don't remember any of my science teachers at school or university bringing religion or atheism into the discussion.
I can't see how either subject has any relation to Newton's Laws, the Doppler Effect, polymerisation of nylon, statistical studies of cohorts, Bayesian Probability, or the anatomy of elasmobranch fishes.
At any rate, there are lots of faith schools in the UK, supported by the government.
The USA is notoriously religious, despite the exclusion of religion from its public schools.
I don't think religious people should be worried that their cause is being trodden down by indoctrination of children.
Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Still, it's really fun to stand in the middle of a group of people yelling "you're going to hell" in a megaphone with a sign that says "nah, he's just kidding" while giving people hugs and candy Counter-protests ftw!
You'd need a sign to acvoid police charges of molestation I'd proffer a nice counter sign
"He's full of it. God Love's you. Here have a cookie."
Kilkrazy wrote:It seems to me that you are wildly speculating in order to build a case for the inclusion of religion in schools.
Its not wild at all mate, just because you dont like what I say doesnt mean it it. I gave good reasons and those reasons hold water.
Kilkrazy wrote:
The USA is notoriously religious, despite the exclusion of religion from its public schools.
and you fail to see the connection right in front of your face.
Why do people become Westboro Baptists? Its teachings are diametrically opposed to a lot of what Christianity stands for, the only way you can become one is if you had a sinister agenda - which can account for some - or you had no religious education and fell for vile lies. In all likelihood these lies are compounded by threats of damnation if you did not agree wholeheartedly with everything Phelps says. Phelps congregation had no knowledge ammo to resist, and once someone is in a cult human nature means its very hard for them to leave.
What are scientilogy critics doing when they speak of Xenu? Scientology critics are not in general out to kill the religion, though this may not account for Anonymous now with the 'never forgive, never forget' message, they are out to expose its teaching so that those in the inside understand. Plenty of ex-scientologists practice in the free zone and continue the moral teachings of their faith, but are now empowered against abuse.
We get cults here, but its nothing like the problem you get in the US, and a lack of knowledge is the principle weakness a cult latches onto, that plus personal vulnerability - which is a universal factor, you will always find societal victims to recruit into cults.
Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Still, it's really fun to stand in the middle of a group of people yelling "you're going to hell" in a megaphone with a sign that says "nah, he's just kidding" while giving people hugs and candy Counter-protests ftw!
You'd need a sign to acvoid police charges of molestation I'd proffer a nice counter sign
"He's full of it. God Love's you. Here have a cookie."
I don't want to ruffle any feathers. I'd go with "If God exists, he probably loves you." Actually did the former with some friends in full Gaga garb
Kilkrazy wrote:I don't know about these days, but when I was at school we had Divinity or Religious Education classes. That is the correct place to be taught comparative religion. I remember it being all Christianity actually.
Religion deals with the supernatural world. Church is the place to be taught your own religion.
Science deals with the natural world, not the supernatural world. Science classes are the place to be taught science.
Here's the problem. Evolution/creation is like engine repair/design. Enginer repauir is how it works. Thats evolution and science. Who designed it in the first place? thats the bailiwick of religion. Teach the rules (RAW: evolution) as a process and forget the RAI aspect (why?, what set this up, etc. etc.) as its not needed nor appropriate for a high school class.
I think we've all learned something today, but frankly I don't know what.
Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Still, it's really fun to stand in the middle of a group of people yelling "you're going to hell" in a megaphone with a sign that says "nah, he's just kidding" while giving people hugs and candy Counter-protests ftw!
You'd need a sign to acvoid police charges of molestation I'd proffer a nice counter sign
"He's full of it. God Love's you. Here have a cookie."
I don't want to ruffle any feathers. I'd go with "If God exists, he probably loves you." Actually did the former with some friends in full Gaga garb
The trouble with the former it doesn't sound like a counter protest.
If someone came with a megaphone and stood in the middle of a religious group and yelled "you're going to hell" other people won't see a counter demonstration, they will see 'religious fanatics', which would be rather nasty if the religious group was not acting in that fashion. As some people expect churches do exactly that and are disappointed when they don't its not too unlikely a scenario.
I have seen something broadly similar in effect.
I remember discussing God quietly with a friend in a corner table of a cafe, two women came to the next table sat down overheard what we were saying and started yelling, yes yelling, about not wanting to hear our religious crud and made complaint that I was causing a disturbance!
Kilkrazy wrote:
The USA is notoriously religious, despite the exclusion of religion from its public schools.
and you fail to see the connection right in front of your face.
Why do people become Westboro Baptists? Its teachings are diametrically opposed to a lot of what Christianity stands for, the only way you can become one is if you had a sinister agenda - which can account for some - or you had no religious education and fell for vile lies. In all likelihood these lies are compounded by threats of damnation if you did not agree wholeheartedly with everything Phelps says. Phelps congregation had no knowledge ammo to resist, and once someone is in a cult human nature means its very hard for them to leave.
What are scientilogy critics doing when they speak of Xenu? Scientology critics are not in general out to kill the religion, though this may not account for Anonymous now with the 'never forgive, never forget' message, they are out to expose its teaching so that those in the inside understand. Plenty of ex-scientologists practice in the free zone and continue the moral teachings of their faith, but are now empowered against abuse.
We get cults here, but its nothing like the problem you get in the US, and a lack of knowledge is the principle weakness a cult latches onto, that plus personal vulnerability - which is a universal factor, you will always find societal victims to recruit into cults.
The only problem i have with that is Science being replaced with Religion in schools (as in teaching creationism, world is only 6000 years old etc) and while many Christians etc may not believe that it still may be taught in an area where the belief is popular.
The only Religion discussion i would be willing to see in school would be say a "Religious history" or "Religious Study" class with more than just Christianity, the class wouldn't be "say Jesus is your Saviour for an A" it would be a historical discussion of many religions and their origins with a breakdown of their beliefs (main sects of the religion, etc). That class could actually be beneficial to peoples understanding of religion, and wouldn't prefer one over the other or present dogma as fact.
The only problem i have with that is Science being replaced with Religion in schools (as in teaching creationism, world is only 6000 years old etc) and while many Christians etc may not believe that it still may be taught in an area where the belief is popular.
The only Religion discussion i would be willing to see in school would be say a "Religious history" or "Religious Study" class with more than just Christianity, the class wouldn't be "say Jesus is your Saviour for an A" it would be a historical discussion of many religions and their origins with a breakdown of their beliefs (main sects of the religion, etc). That class could actually be beneficial to peoples understanding of religion, and wouldn't prefer one over the other or present dogma as fact.
I agree, and already did. I think you must have misread my earlier comments. This is the multi-point perspective mentioned earlier. You take a curricuum of several faiths and explore what they mean, this gives a grounding on the doctrines behind most of the relgions on earth and therefore insight into their societies. Much of the later curriculum would be involved with the history of religion and its social effects.
However at one point the class should be "Jesus is Saviour for an A", as a sub-syllabus on understanding Christianity. "Mohammed is the True prophet" also gets an A in another sub-syllabus in understanding Islam. You see you arent indoctrinating anyone into a relgion because you are teaching a multi point perspective, but teasching each persepctive as real. This is very important as people then get to realise on their own, that they cannot believe everything and thus begin to think for themselves. It also dispels fear of another faith and makes it difficult to dodgy preachers to hoodwink these people into joining an extra sect or sub-group.
The only downside is when joke religions come about and demand equal % time on the syllabus. This can be avoided by explaining that you teach a multi-point religious syllabus based on theri major world religions and all school syllabuses have to select where time is to be allocated. There is still room for flying spaghetti monsters etc later when the syllabus turns from knowledge absorbtion to knowledge assimilation in later years and instead of teaching core religious doctrines you teach understanding of the ramifications of religion in the world at large. Pastafarianism is an example of US law based legal strategy interacting with religion.
rubiksnoob wrote:What I think most people fail to recognize about this whole creationism/ID v. atheism/science arguement is that the most vocal participants are a small minority on BOTH sides.
It isn't all atheists v. a small minority of religious wackoes, and it's not all religious people v. a small minority of rabid atheists.
It's a small minority of atheist nutjobs v. a small minority of religious nutjobs. The rest of us really aren't all that concerned about pushing our beliefs, or lack thereof, on others.
This I just disagree with. Atheists do not affect laws about gay marriage, liquor on sundays, women's reproductive rights, hair length or beard length, durka, women's literacy, and publicly spout ignorance as fact, affecting all of society's next generation with their delusions. Religious delusionals do not suffer existing in a system based on Atheist restrictions, Atheists suffer existing in a system based on religious delusions though. All a religious person has to say is "I have faith" and he can believe and act on all sorts of nonsense, protected by his right to freedom of religion. And unfortunately, delusional people can vote, hence the bible belt actually being an important political demographic, even when the candidates are sensible people, they still have to give a nod to the megachurches. My Cosmic Killer Whale counter-theory would just end up with being harassed, committed, and called a nutjob by judges who are also part of the religious system.
Oh yeah....
f*ck.
hmm... must be a glitch in my computer, not a puritanical group of uptight people who decide that certain words are naughty, but others, like "KILL" are just fine and acceptable.
Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Still, it's really fun to stand in the middle of a group of people yelling "you're going to hell" in a megaphone with a sign that says "nah, he's just kidding" while giving people hugs and candy Counter-protests ftw!
You'd need a sign to acvoid police charges of molestation I'd proffer a nice counter sign
"He's full of it. God Love's you. Here have a cookie."
I don't want to ruffle any feathers. I'd go with "If God exists, he probably loves you." Actually did the former with some friends in full Gaga garb
The trouble with the former it doesn't sound like a counter protest.
If someone came with a megaphone and stood in the middle of a religious group and yelled "you're going to hell" other people won't see a counter demonstration, they will see 'religious fanatics', which would be rather nasty if the religious group was not acting in that fashion. As some people expect churches do exactly that and are disappointed when they don't its not too unlikely a scenario.
I have seen something broadly similar in effect.
I remember discussing God quietly with a friend in a corner table of a cafe, two women came to the next table sat down overheard what we were saying and started yelling, yes yelling, about not wanting to hear our religious crud and made complaint that I was causing a disturbance!
Confuzzled. I meant that I actually did what I said in my first post, not that I told anyone they were going to hell. There's some nasty "witnesses" in downtown Fort Worth. I've also had several people approach me with religious crap in Starbucks and I usually tell them to kindly feth off (not saying you were doing that, just giving you context).
rubiksnoob wrote:What I think most people fail to recognize about this whole creationism/ID v. atheism/science arguement is that the most vocal participants are a small minority on BOTH sides.
It isn't all atheists v. a small minority of religious wackoes, and it's not all religious people v. a small minority of rabid atheists.
It's a small minority of atheist nutjobs v. a small minority of religious nutjobs. The rest of us really aren't all that concerned about pushing our beliefs, or lack thereof, on others.
This I just disagree with. Atheists do not affect laws about gay marriage, liquor on sundays, women's reproductive rights, hair length or beard length, durka, women's literacy, and publicly spout ignorance as fact, affecting all of society's next generation with their delusions. Religious delusionals do not suffer existing in a system based on Atheist restrictions, Atheists suffer existing in a system based on religious delusions though. All a religious person has to say is "I have faith" and he can believe and act on all sorts of nonsense, protected by his right to freedom of religion. And unfortunately, delusional people can vote, hence the bible belt actually being an important political demographic, even when the candidates are sensible people, they still have to give a nod to the megachurches. My Cosmic Killer Whale counter-theory would just end up with being harassed, committed, and called a nutjob by judges who are also part of the religious system.
Oh yeah....
f*ck.
hmm... must be a glitch in my computer, not a puritanical group of uptight people who decide that certain words are naughty, but others, like "KILL" are just fine and acceptable.
Guitardian wrote:
This I just disagree with. Atheists do not affect laws about gay marriage, liquor on sundays, women's reproductive rights, hair length or beard length, durka, women's literacy,....
Atheists are not Moslems, we got that bit without your help.
Guitardian wrote:.... and publicly spout ignorance as fact, affecting all of society's next generation with their delusions.
Is there any point in trying to educate you, when you spout such total nonsense and blame the 'religious' as the deluded ones? For a start you blame Islams worst faults on religion in general appealing to having a solution by not being religious, that is inane at best. However before you highlight atheism as a societal solution to religion look up where where it has been tried before. Look up Soviet Union, China, Pol Pot, to some extent revolutionary France - all tried to practice the dogma that religion is evil, and atheism is progress. More sinisterly a convert or die methodology was not beyond them, especially the Chinese. As far as religious despotism in living memory goes the atheist state as expressed under communism frankly makes radical Islam look rather pleasant in comparison.
Guitardian wrote:
Religious delusionals do not suffer existing in a system based on Atheist restrictions,
Look up Stalins purges of the churches and Jews and the atheism used to justify them. Look up Tibet, cross reference with Chinese annexation of. Get educated before commenting further, after all you are claiming to be the non deluded one yes?. If you are man enough come back and change your words once you have read what history has to tell you. The Chinese invasion of Tibet and its atheistic dogmas used to flatten a theocratic state at peace with itself (go on you try and tell us the Dalai Lama is a religious despot). They are still destroying temples and killing monks even now over fifty years on.
Please please get educated before you come back with more religion-is-delusion atheism-is-not. You keep coming up with it even though it was pointed out time and again to be categorically false with long bloody history to go with it.
Christianity had its problem era centuries ago, The worst cases of human misery we have seen in a hundred years exceeding even Hitler's crimes were caused under atheist based totalitarianism. Yes atheism is not necessarily the true core of communism, its more an excuse, but that is always the case with any politicvised dogma. Religio-political issues are political first and formost, this is why one Islamic country may want lasting peace with Israel while another might want to annihilate it.
Guitardian wrote:
Atheists suffer existing in a system based on religious delusions though.
That can be true if one lives in Iran and are an atheist. However atheists in fundamentalist states can usually hide themselves as there are no tenets to follow to give you away.
Guitardian wrote:
All a religious person has to say is "I have faith" and he can believe and act on all sorts of nonsense, protected by his right to freedom of religion.
They may have freedoms, but apparently no immunity from abuse from atheist fundamentalists. They should not suffer for their beliefs.
We expect this sort of gak from write-offs like militant Islamics, should we expect it from you?
Guitardian wrote:
And unfortunately, delusional people can vote,
Refraining from making a cheap shot here.
Guitardian wrote:
even when the candidates are sensible people, they still have to give a nod to the megachurches. My Cosmic Killer Whale counter-theory would just end up with being harassed, committed, and called a nutjob by judges who are also part of the religious system.
I wonder if this is the case everywhere. In hear of many politicians who did not reveal their faith choices until after they left office because it might count against them. I dont consider Blair a particularly good example though it is true of him, because that snake would claim anything even above and beyond the duty for dishonest politicians.
Edit: This was open a a long while in my reply box. Perhaps Frazzie put it better. Guitardian if you come back at this, without having some comment indicating you heave read up on atheist fundamentalism in history, I will take the advice offered and not feed troll any further.
Guitardian wrote:
This I just disagree with. Atheists do not affect laws about gay marriage, liquor on sundays, women's reproductive rights, hair length or beard length, durka, women's literacy,....
Atheists are not Moslems, we got that bit without your help.
Guitardian wrote:.... and publicly spout ignorance as fact, affecting all of society's next generation with their delusions.
Is there any point in trying to educate you, when you spout such total nonsense and blame the 'religious' as the deluded ones? For a start you blame Islams worst faults on religion in general appealing to having a solution by not being religious, that is inane at best. However before you highlight atheism as a societal solution to religion look up where where it has been tried before. Look up Soviet Union, China, Pol Pot, to some extent revolutionary France - all tried to practice the dogma that religion is evil, and atheism is progress. More sinisterly a convert or die methodology was not beyond them, especially the Chinese. As far as religious despotism in living memory goes the atheist state as expressed under communism frankly makes radical Islam look rather pleasant in comparison.
Guitardian wrote:
Religious delusionals do not suffer existing in a system based on Atheist restrictions,
Look up Stalins purges of the churches and Jews and the atheism used to justify them. Look up Tibet, cross reference with Chinese annexation of. Get educated before commenting further, after all you are claiming to be the non deluded one yes?. If you are man enough come back and change your words once you have read what history has to tell you. The Chinese invasion of Tibet and its atheistic dogmas used to flatten a theocratic state at peace with itself (go on you try and tell us the Dalai Lama is a religious despot). They are still destroying temples and killing monks even now over fifty years on.
Please please get educated before you come back with more religion-is-delusion atheism-is-not. You keep coming up with it even though it was pointed out time and again to be categorically false with long bloody history to go with it.
Christianity had its problem era centuries ago, The worst cases of human misery we have seen in a hundred years exceeding even Hitler's crimes were caused under atheist based totalitarianism. Yes atheism is not necessarily the true core of communism, its more an excuse, but that is always the case with any politicvised dogma. Religio-political issues are political first and formost, this is why one Islamic country may want lasting peace with Israel while another might want to annihilate it.
Guitardian wrote:
Atheists suffer existing in a system based on religious delusions though.
That can be true if one lives in Iran and are an atheist. However atheists in fundamentalist states can usually hide themselves as there are no tenets to follow to give you away.
Guitardian wrote:
All a religious person has to say is "I have faith" and he can believe and act on all sorts of nonsense, protected by his right to freedom of religion.
They may have freedoms, but apparently no immunity from abuse from atheist fundamentalists. They should not suffer for their beliefs.
We expect this sort of gak from write-offs like militant Islamics, should we expect it from you?
Guitardian wrote:
And unfortunately, delusional people can vote,
Refraining from making a cheap shot here.
Guitardian wrote:
even when the candidates are sensible people, they still have to give a nod to the megachurches. My Cosmic Killer Whale counter-theory would just end up with being harassed, committed, and called a nutjob by judges who are also part of the religious system.
I wonder if this is the case everywhere. In hear of many politicians who did not reveal their faith choices until after they left office because it might count against them. I dont consider Blair a particularly good example though it is true of him, because that snake would claim anything even above and beyond the duty for dishonest politicians.
Edit: This was open a a long while in my reply box. Perhaps Frazzie put it better. Guitardian if you come back at this, without having some comment indicating you heave read up on atheist fundamentalism in history, I will take the advice offered and not feed troll any further.
wow where to begin?
Is there any point in educating me?
--well isn't that what the museum is for?
I can't see how historical Atheist fundamentalism (or biblical/quranical/bookical whatever) interpretation historically has anything to do with spouting untruth as truth. Maybe a lot of regimes have been bloody barbarous and atheistic, but so have the jihads, crusades, cave men beating each other with sticks over who stole the sun. China and the U.S.S.R. did not seek to carve a communist state specifically to attack religion. They attacked anything that was not all for the state. Atheism didn't make them bad people, Lack of common sense made them bad people. Assuming that people would be happy to follow the horde made them bad people. The same can be said of piety-based societies too. Some are good, some are bad. Thinking that people's drilled in devoutly believed unprovable notions should have no business in reality based teachings is not the same as becoming a communist saying kill kill kill. Common sense versus idealism? Oh wait it happened again! Thanks Frazz, the judge hath spoken that all people that believe something are protected in their nonsense while people that say it's nonsense should shut up or read the bible. Am I getting close?
AS far as pointing out the worst bits of any particular belief system. Isn't god kind of an all-or-nothing thing? If it is flawed then it is not god's doing, right? One lie in a list of truths makes an untrue list. You don't claim 'faith' as a rationale for only the stuff you like, and just kind of ignore the stuff you don't. It's the word of GOD. And that means I am in line for a damn good stoning, aren't I?
Thanks Frazz, the judge hath spoken that all people that believe something are protected in their nonsense while people that say it's nonsense should shut up or read the bible. Am I getting close?
Close to what? The truth not by a long shot.
A strange uncontrollable desire to streak through your nearest Jiffy Lube mayhaps?
rubiksnoob wrote:It's a small minority of atheist nutjobs v. a small minority of religious nutjobs. The rest of us really aren't all that concerned about pushing our beliefs, or lack thereof, on others.
Asking that evolution is taught in schools and not creationism isn't about pushing beliefs upon others. To describe it as a minority of 'atheist nutjobs' is quite ignorant. Many people concerned about creationism in schools are academics and professionals working in science and education, regardless of their religious belief or lack of it, they aren't promoting atheism or religion, they are promoting the teaching of *fact*.
Evolution isn't a belief, it's factually correct as demonstrated by actual evidence. It's not a commentary on religion. Creationists attempt to paint evolution as being an 'atheistic belief' mainly so they can claim their 'religious belief' is and equally valid alternative and deserves equal attention.
That evolution is taught in science class is not a matter of a popularity contest between theists and atheists but because it is actual verifiable science. Promoting evolution is not pushing beliefs or lack of beliefs on anyone, it's about concentrating on teaching things that are scientifically and factually accurate in schools, instead of devoting valuable class time to nonsense theories just to appease certain religious groups and filling kids heads with conflicting and ignorant nonsense.
Okay, you definitely misunderstood my post.
First off, I'm as opposed to the idea of teaching creationism in the classroom as you are. What I was saying was that the individuals on both sides who insist that the other side conform to their beliefs are generally in the minority. From my experience at least, most atheists don't give a flip about religious peoples' beliefs, and vice versa. There are some atheists, however, that will flip their gak if they find out someone is religious and proceed to chew them out over their beliefs, insisting that they are wrong at every turn. Again, there are religious people like this as well.
What I was trying to say is, most people don't give a flying feth about other people's beliefs as long as they are decent people.
And just for the record, I am neither an atheist nor a creationist/ID believer, and just so you're clear, I'm not even Christian. I am a firm supporter of the teaching of evolution in schools, so don't think I'm advocating the teaching of creationism or intelligent design. I am fully opposed to that.
Thanks Frazz, the judge hath spoken that all people that believe something are protected in their nonsense while people that say it's nonsense should shut up or read the bible. Am I getting close?
Close to what? The truth not by a long shot.
A strange uncontrollable desire to streak through your nearest Jiffy Lube mayhaps?
No, but if it weren't for these meddling ki... christians, I would be able to stand in line neckid.
rubiksnoob wrote:What I think most people fail to recognize about this whole creationism/ID v. atheism/science arguement is that the most vocal participants are a small minority on BOTH sides.
It isn't all atheists v. a small minority of religious wackoes, and it's not all religious people v. a small minority of rabid atheists.
It's a small minority of atheist nutjobs v. a small minority of religious nutjobs. The rest of us really aren't all that concerned about pushing our beliefs, or lack thereof, on others.
This I just disagree with. Atheists do not affect laws about gay marriage, liquor on sundays, women's reproductive rights, hair length or beard length, durka, women's literacy, and publicly spout ignorance as fact, affecting all of society's next generation with their delusions. Religious delusionals do not suffer existing in a system based on Atheist restrictions, Atheists suffer existing in a system based on religious delusions though. All a religious person has to say is "I have faith" and he can believe and act on all sorts of nonsense, protected by his right to freedom of religion. And unfortunately, delusional people can vote, hence the bible belt actually being an important political demographic, even when the candidates are sensible people, they still have to give a nod to the megachurches. My Cosmic Killer Whale counter-theory would just end up with being harassed, committed, and called a nutjob by judges who are also part of the religious system.
Oh yeah....
f*ck.
hmm... must be a glitch in my computer, not a puritanical group of uptight people who decide that certain words are naughty, but others, like "KILL" are just fine and acceptable.
Suffering? You mean the delusions you have of being some kind of victim or martyr? Get over yourself.
You ever get beat up by 'christian' kids on a playground because you dont go to church? You ever get harassed by a cop in a small southern town? This aint about me I am no more a martyr than anyone else who says "WTF?" when they read about scientology, which clearly makes less sense than Christianity or Islam, right? it's about the assumption of holy book 'truth' imposing itself upon others but crying foul when the illogical unprovable stuff that they believe as their justification gets questioned.
Guitardian wrote:You ever get beat up by 'christian' kids on a playground because you dont go to church? You ever get harassed by a cop in a small southern town? This aint about me I am no more a martyr than anyone else who says "WTF?" when they read about scientology, which clearly makes less sense than Christianity or Islam, right? it's about the assumption of holy book 'truth' imposing itself upon others but crying foul when the illogical unprovable stuff that they believe as their justification gets questioned.
Everyone gets screwed at some point, on that front we're all equal
Guitardian wrote:You ever get beat up by 'christian' kids on a playground because you dont go to church? You ever get harassed by a cop in a small southern town? This aint about me I am no more a martyr than anyone else who says "WTF?" when they read about scientology, which clearly makes less sense than Christianity or Islam, right? it's about the assumption of holy book 'truth' imposing itself upon others but crying foul when the illogical unprovable stuff that they believe as their justification gets questioned.
Thats cause you're a wussy. If you can't take on the Christian kids how the heck are you going to handle the Holy Speghetti Monster crowd?
You really do have a chip on your solder. Do you need a shoulder to cry on? there there, its ok, Grandpa Frazzled says everythings gonna be just fine.
Guitardian wrote:You ever get beat up by 'christian' kids on a playground because you dont go to church? You ever get harassed by a cop in a small southern town? This aint about me I am no more a martyr than anyone else who says "WTF?" when they read about scientology, which clearly makes less sense than Christianity or Islam, right? it's about the assumption of holy book 'truth' imposing itself upon others but crying foul when the illogical unprovable stuff that they believe as their justification gets questioned.
Yeah, someone who apparently blames every bad thing in their life on a group of people is going to be hard to reason with.
again! So the religious can complain about unfair treatment by all of the ruthless rational people, but the rational person gets mocked for being a whiner complaining back? Yeah this is pretty much on par with the whole 'i cannot be disproved therefore i am' explaination of god. Nothing I haven't seen before.
The sky is purple and you just haven't read all of my reasons why yet, that's why you think it's blue.
I don't get what an Atheist Fundamentalist actually is, if it is someone that devoutly believes in nothing, isn't that just Nihilism? That there is no greater purpose, or greater power that even matters or interferes with us? I mean all atheists are fundamentalists because they all literally believe there is no God. They don't loosely believe in atheism they fully believe and a fundamentalist is someone who subscribes to a certain scope of ideas and nothing outside of it. If you are not a fundamentalist atheists you are not an atheist, you are agnostic or ignostic.
The problem with fundamentalist in religion is that their idea of a literal bible contradicts with the progression of science and understand of how things work. Take example, Galileo, and his problems with the Church. Which later, the Church was like, OK our bad he was right. The Vatican has a science department, and they study sciences there. The problem is, people, not the religion really. People cannot let go of their ideas. The rest of it is usually used to be turned into a political issue.
Take a look at Sharia Law. On paper, it isn't all that bad to be honest. Talks about respecting the elderly, not destroying the land, or exploiting people. As a religious set of laws it isn't any worse than say the 10 commandments. However, the problem is that people use that to bend and construe everything around until they get their desired results. Hence, the Jihad clause, which then allows the Muslim to break all Sharia Laws. Which sort of defeats the whole purpose of the law to begin with.
Next, take a look at Old Testament Vs New Testament. To me, you cannot really cherry pick and pick and choose which aspects of either book you like. Obviously, if you take it from a literal stand point it is pretty easy to conclude that at one time God was pissed off, vengeful and didn't take crap from no one. However, God changed, and has now become more lenient, forgiving, loving and sacrificed his only son to give mankind salvation, instead of him having a human sacrifice their only son, which is what happened in the old book. To be honest, the more modernized version of God (new testament) is what is accepted and the old testament should be treated as back story. Though fundamentalist like to cherry pick both books. For example, they like use references in the old testament to gay bash, however, if anyone ever read Deuteronomy they would clearly see how old Christian law treated women and marriage. If a woman lied about being a virgin, and you found out after you married her, it was totally legal to stone her to death. You could own slaves, and so forth. I really get irked with people that cherry pick all over the bible, because obviously if you read the thing and took it literally, God is now pretty much an all loving, liberal activist, who is all about personal rights and expression, as well as proponent of being meek and peaceful.
So, really the problem isn't religion it is people. Humans are flawed in many ways. All of us have our flaws (I include myself as well), and we love justification for our flaws. Some people fear change, fear or hate something and they want to use religion, or another tool to justify their actions. Some humans are even more dangerous in the fact they will use the same systems to influence other people to take up action for the causes they believe in. Religions don't say bomb abortion clinics, or shoot abortion doctors. Religions don't say fly planes into buildings. Those are all made up by man, and made up by twisting religion around to fit their needs and causes. After all, religion is man made anyway.
You can easily teach religion in school. All religions, but using a religion to push a political agenda, ie abortion, would be extremely unconstitutional in many countries that have a separation clause. That would be the dangers of teaching a religion in school. I have friends that have kids that are very young and in preschool. Their preschool has already pushed Jesus on them, with out even the parent's knowing. Which I think is wrong. What if the parents were Jewish, Buddhist, Taoist, Shintaoist, Harri Krishna, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, Muslim, and so forth? Jesus really has no place in preschool. Plus at such an impressionable age those things should not be taught to kids, unless the parents want it. I grew up religious and by the time I was 12 I was done with it. I have a few crazy fundies in my family, and then a bunch of non practitioners, and a few people like me that just think the whole concept of defining a God is just silly.
People just need to realize the concept of my freedom stops where your's begins, and a lot of this political agenda nonsense with religion could possibly go away.
Guitardian wrote:again! So the religious can complain about unfair treatment by all of the ruthless rational people, but the rational person gets mocked for being a whiner complaining back? Yeah this is pretty much on par with the whole 'i cannot be disproved therefore i am' explaination of god. Nothing I haven't seen before.
Who are you arguing against, exactly?
I don't think I'm treated unfairly by atheists so I'm not sure what you mean. They have their beliefs; I have mine. I'm happy to discuss it reasonably if people can be polite.
My overall concern isn't so much being "persicuted" by Christians.
It's centered around those in positions of lawmaking/deciding policy etc who may take their cue from a "Higher Power" or the tenants/belief system thereoff.
Let's be complete honest...If an elected official said he believed in " Harvey the invisible Rabbit" most people would seek to have him removed.
Yet the same is not true of a politician stating a belief in "god"...any god.
And when it comes to cold hard facts...god (any god) is just as imaginary as Harvey...god (any god) just has better PR men.
Crom wrote:I don't get what an Atheist Fundamentalist actually is, if it is someone that devoutly believes in nothing, isn't that just Nihilism?
A fair enough question that demands answer, this answer has evolved over time with result of past discussions with more level minded atheists and theists alike here on Dakka.
Some atheists believe 'in nothing', these atheists like to say that it is a 'lack of belief' not a 'belief in lack'. Some here certainly believe this is true of themselves. I do not fully agree because thinking about something on a conscious level includes a choice of believing in it or not, and that a true 'no opinion' option only applies if one never thinks about a subject. Both arguments hold some merit, but let us assume out of fairness and brevity that one can have a 'lack of belief' without a 'belief in lack', as many have stated their personal case for such here on Dakka; after all it would by hypocritical for a Christian not to accept 'religious testimony' as evidence, even if those who give such testimony do not consider it religious.
However in any case people who profess a 'lack of belief' are not relevant to the greater discussion on atheist fundementalism, because those are by definition not the atheists one needs to worry about. If someone who has a 'lack of belief', or a very loose fitting denial (depending ones point of view), is at most a half-hearted atheist. This does not necessarily mean they are half-headed, so the analogy of half-hearted works fine.
Then there is the other kind. You see an active 'belief in lack' is the other side of atheism, whether this is an intentionally permanent choice to reject the divine or a matter of 'I actively won't believe unless proven'. Some atheists prefer to think that a 'lack of belief' is the true status of an atheist, probably because they relate their own good nature and open mindedness as attributes of atheism in general, however with exposure to examples of known atheist fanaticism it is easy to see that there is this other side to atheism. Such people who have a 'belief in lack' have claim to a more hearty atheism, but have essentially made an active religious faith choice* in doing so. If I may put it crudely, those with an active 'belief in lack' join the 'faith of no-God'. Such people are often very evident, we see them here on Dakka and elsewhere in life. Sadly a large proportion become fanatics, not due to any inherent badness of the faith choice compared to other faith choices, but because as atheism is typically seen as not a religion so those who follow an active atheism can fall into the mental trapping of religious fanaticism more strongly than many theists because they may be unaware of their own growing religiosity as religiosity and make no attempts to backtrack from fundamentalism as most thinking theists learn they need to do. The catalyst of this change is normally due to a well deserved disdain for other forms of religious fundamentalism, the universe is not without irony. However it is also compounded by 'atheistic science' which due to its scientific basis has authority and is plausible at first look but due to the blindness of atheist fundamentalism fail to see that science is itself neutral, it speaks only for the mundane and not for the spiritual and passes no comment on the existence or absence of divine order as a result. This blindness comes about because unfortunately atheist fundamentalists are not the only fundamentalists out there, and those others often say the most outrageous things disprovable by science, or even without science, which gives the easy illusion that science itself is a defender of the atheist cause.
* From a Chrsitian perspective rather than a general theist perspective every atheist has made an active atheistic decision because the decision to accept Christ or not is active, any 'not-yes' is considered a de facto 'no'. However this and previous comment on this subject do not take that directly into account in a general theism vs atheism philosophical discussion as they would impose spectific personal sub-beleifs rather than the general issue, which I cannot fairly do, no matter how important they appear to me..
I'm sure you have heard this question before, but, what happens to those who lived without knowing about Jesus Christ their Personal Lord and Savior? Those for whom the blessing of never knowing about hell to whom it never occured to make this 'active desion'? Hellfire and damnation?
I am bummed I didn't get to live 2000 years ago so I could be a saint too for hanging out with god first hand. Not my fault I wasn't there.
Guitardian wrote:I'm sure you have heard this question before, but, what happens to those who lived without knowing about Jesus Christ their Personal Lord and Savior? Those for whom the blessing of never knowing about hell to whom it never occured to make this 'active desion'? Hellfire and damnation?
I am bummed I didn't get to live 2000 years ago so I could be a saint too for hanging out with god first hand. Not my fault I wasn't there.
Guitardian wrote:I'm sure you have heard this question before, but, what happens to those who lived without knowing about Jesus Christ their Personal Lord and Savior? Those for whom the blessing of never knowing about hell to whom it never occured to make this 'active desion'? Hellfire and damnation?
I am bummed I didn't get to live 2000 years ago so I could be a saint too for hanging out with god first hand. Not my fault I wasn't there.
Ok I will answer this one for you, but I will throw this question back at you while I answer:
Why not ask about the good things in the Bible? Why not ask if salvation is as easy as a prayer or if it applies to everyone.
I hear this one alot, another similar example is: If Hitler repented at his end would her be in heaven? The naswer to that is yes, but why do people ask if salvation is available for scum or possibly avbsent from distant figures of history rather than apply the same message to themselves and their families. The Gospel means Good News, and it should be accepted as such.
Anyway back to your (hopefully comprehensive) answer.
In general: Christianity teaches that those who reject Jesus face eternity in Hell. I believe this.
It is believed that anyone who does not actively accept Christ goes to Hell, not quite the same thing and is not fully backed by scripture.
- There are those who died pre-Christ who were as the book of Hebrews stated were 'credited with righteousness' that is to say got into heaven on credit.
- Scripture points to the child of David and Bethsheba who died as an infant, scripture reports that David said that he would in time go to his child, as David is one of those credited with rigtheousness and was therefore elevated to heaven the child is there also. As the child made no profession of faith (being a week old when he died) this raises the question of what happens with other children who die.
- The book of Romans refer to gentiles as people (paraphrased) 'a law unto themselves, with their spirits sometimes condemning them sometimes even exonerating them'. I will come back to this point later.
This is often taken to mean that God judges those who do not hear the Gospel according to their own standards.
This leaves another related comment or question often brought up. I will try and get wording from it from an atheist site...hold on....
I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' 'No,' said the priest, 'not if you did not know.' 'Then why,' asked the Eskimo earnestly, 'did you tell me?' - Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974
I don't know if the book was atheistic or just the character. I know that this quote and others like it often surface.
So did the priest do the eskimo a favour by preaching the gospel? Yes but the priest likely failed to own up to the full message earlier, by blanket exonerating all who preceded the arrival of his message, probably so as not to cause offense. The Bible does not do that, it exonerates only those who do not hear the Gospel, and those who precede evidently needed to be 'credited with righteousness' I take this to mean live lives according to their own inner standards, that is those who strive to do good those who strive to not sin. Within Christianity this cannot save a man as good deeds are 'dirty rags' and salvation is by faith alone. But evidently amongst the Christless this is all God has to go on.
So the message is, without the Gospel only those who are transparently good go to heaven. With the Gospel anyone who accepts, good or not, goes to heaven and the old order no longer applies. Thus the Gospel lowers the entry standard in order to be of benefit but removed the option to get in on credit by being nice. So I suggest the pre-Christ entry standard is likely pretty high, were it not it would be better for the Gospel not to be preached, it would be better to fill heaven with the humanly good than the faithful. Children get in for free, with an unknown cut off age, most likely an age of awareness of right and wrong. It could be argued that someone too slowed to be self aware also gets in free.
One further question is asked at this point.
What happens to the good man who would have got into heaven on credit but does not because the local preacher doesnt put the message across well. The answer here is predestination. several passages in scripture indicate that many if not all the 'elect' are saved from birth, that is to say god says I want this one, and in time I will claim him. Some believe predistination is uinversal, (Calvinism) others do not accept it at all due to human free will (Armenianism). I go halfway, predestination occurs for some and free will for others, even the predestined have free will, just God knows which way that will will go.
One neat explanation, which doesn't necessarily make it true, is that the predestined are those who would have been 'credited with righteousness' had the Gospel been absent and God makes sure such people hear the gospel from a source that delivers the message competently, more than once if necessary. If this is true the Gospel can only ever be a benefit.
I cannot confirm this theology but it is the only one that matches scripture as I read it. There are alternate views. Many Christians will however directly take the scripture rigidly and believe that failing to accept Jesus Christ means going to hell for anyone anytime excepting those names in the book of Hebrews. I cannot except that, God isnt hardened like that, there must be others and there must be a criteria that followed.
Some believe that the unreached hear the Gospel once upon death, the benefit being that the living may get more than the one chance. Possibly everyone gets this one chance on death and the Gospel is simply giving bonus opportunity, or perhaps this one change for all/the unreached occurs at judgement day. I cannot claim for sure, there are no clues to indicate this is true, but who am I to say how God runs things. All I know is that there are exceptions, and that God is fair, so some criteria is likely to apply somewhere. God is neither heartless nor dogmatic, but is bound to His own law in order to claim to be just. The cross is evidence for that.
Orlanth wrote:
What happens to the good man who would have got into heaven on credit but does not because the local preacher doesnt put the message across well?
Well, I can't prove my belief either, but I like what C.S. Lewis did in The Last Battle where a boy had lived for Tash his whole life, and was in reality serving Aslan in his thoughts and actions, and so Aslan decided to save him... not that I believe this.
What I really believe is that the Bible is somewhat unclear on this point, and so in my mind who's saved is saved, and until we die it is our duty as Christians to preach the Gospel to un-believers.
How has Atheism 'hijacked' teaching Evolution in schools? I know that the two are sometimes considered closely linked, that evolution is seen by some to be a lesson based soley from atheistic motives, but where is the evidence that this is the case when evolution is taught in schools?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
I go halfway, predestination occurs for some and free will for others, even the predestined have free will, just God knows which way that will will go.
There was a lot else that bears conversation, but this in particular stuck out. If someone knows exactly what choice will be made, was there ever really any choice at all?
I appreciate reading your detailed and thoughtful discussion about salvation, Orlanth. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Some good commentary about Atheism, too, but I'd like to put in my two cents on one particular part of your post which bothered me a bit.
Orlanth wrote: If I may put it crudely, those with an active 'belief in lack' join the 'faith of no-God'. Such people are often very evident, we see them here on Dakka and elsewhere in life. Sadly a large proportion become fanatics, not due to any inherent badness of the faith choice compared to other faith choices, but because as atheism is typically seen as not a religion so those who follow an active atheism can fall into the mental trapping of religious fanaticism more strongly than many theists because they may be unaware of their own growing religiosity as religiosity and make no attempts to backtrack from fundamentalism as most thinking theists learn they need to do.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a large proportion", but I don't believe it's an accurate assessment. At least not on this side of the pond. As you've said, the outspoken and strident atheists are the ones who tend to be the most visible.
Additionally, I'm a bit skeptical about the phrasing "become fanatics", too. Every strident atheist I've dealt with or heard of was pretty fanatical in their opposition to religion, but not fanatical in the sense that they're planting bombs or flying planes into buildings. "Belief in lack" Atheism has the advantage of being a faith which doesn't seem to motivate people to kill, or oppress women, or do much else that's antisocial. Except bothering your religious neighbors, of course, but I've always found the loudmouth atheists less oppressive than the loudmouth Christians; perhaps that's just because the Christians are the majority and wield the power, here in the US. Maybe it's the reverse over on your side of the Atlantic.
Emperors Faithful wrote:Directing this at Orlanth:
How has Atheism 'hijacked' teaching Evolution in schools? I know that the two are sometimes considered closely linked, that evolution is seen by some to be a lesson based soley from atheistic motives, but where is the evidence that this is the case when evolution is taught in schools?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
I go halfway, predestination occurs for some and free will for others, even the predestined have free will, just God knows which way that will will go.
There was a lot else that bears conversation, but this in particular stuck out. If someone knows exactly what choice will be made, was there ever really any choice at all?
It strikes me that the idea that atheism and evolution are closely linked is only advanced by fundamentalist Christians pushing for the YEC/IDs agenda to be got into school science curricula.
How many cases are there on record of biology teachers going, "Blah blah, genetics, blah, natural selection, blah -- and this proves that all religions are false!!"
Mannahnin wrote:I appreciate reading your detailed and thoughtful discussion about salvation, Orlanth. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Some good commentary about Atheism, too, but I'd like to put in my two cents on one particular part of your post which bothered me a bit.
Thankyou
Mannahnin wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean by "a large proportion", but I don't believe it's an accurate assessment. At least not on this side of the pond. As you've said, the outspoken and strident atheists are the ones who tend to be the most visible.
I dont have figures, I wonder who does. However there are ahem lots of religious people out there and only a small percentage are fundamentalists. How many atheists are there? its a growing number
Mannahnin wrote:
Additionally, I'm a bit skeptical about the phrasing "become fanatics", too. Every strident atheist I've dealt with or heard of was pretty fanatical in their opposition to religion, but not fanatical in the sense that they're planting bombs or flying planes into buildings.
How many Christians also do such things, yet we know Christian fanatics exist, Jews too etc.
Mannahnin wrote:
"Belief in lack" Atheism has the advantage of being a faith which doesn't seem to motivate people to kill, or oppress women, or do much else that's antisocial. Except bothering your religious neighbors, of course, but I've always found the loudmouth atheists less oppressive than the loudmouth Christians; perhaps that's just because the Christians are the majority and wield the power, here in the US. Maybe it's the reverse over on your side of the Atlantic.
However look on the threads on this subject right here. Hoe many times has someone come along and said 'wouldnt it be better if fething religion went away', 'things would be ok without the moronic braindead religion' and so forth If I was to take those comments and replace 'religious' with 'infidel' you would have worries about the speaker.
Atheist fundamentalism is about 'making religion go away for the betterment of everyone', they are trying to do the world a favour by getting everyone to admit their truth, so did the Inquisition, so is Jihad believe it or not. Even mind mannered current atheism wants to play politics. In the US the message is 'keep religion out of schools', in the UK its 'get religion out of schools'. In the UK we have faith schools, the Humanist society wants them secularised presenting options for bills before parliament to do exactly that. They overlook that well established fact that the faith schools particularly the CoE ones are amongst the best performing schools in the country and even the previous governemnt which had its ownmatching agenda had little choice but to accept that.
Then we have the Soviets and Red Chinese, enough said on this.
Sorry atheist fundamentalism is real, this means you need not be part of it, nor tone down your beliefs to avoid it. I advocate balance not political-correctness. Nor does it mean all who have an active atheism of 'belief in lack' are fanatics, though I do strongly argue that those who make such a move have made a faith choice and thus a religious preference.
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Kilkrazy wrote:
It strikes me that the idea that atheism and evolution are closely linked is only advanced by fundamentalist Christians pushing for the YEC/IDs agenda to be got into school science curricula.
How many cases are there on record of biology teachers going, "Blah blah, genetics, blah, natural selection, blah -- and this proves that all religions are false!!"
Finding gak like that on record is hard, just like its hard to expose commie teachers. There was a problem with this especially back in the 70's onwards in the UK, it may well have proliferated into the current day longer with left wing bias not being considered a problem under New Labour.
The UK gravitated a lot of hard left often extreme militant left into the teaching profession. To the extend that Thatcher tried to do something about it. Sure Thatcher wont have anything hard left but frankly she had a point, because I saw the effects myself in a state school in the 70's. I remember the abuse I got when in primary school from teachers who disdained the fact that my parents were from a military officer family, and also that I was already literate from my mother for which I was punished 'rather than waiting like everyone else'. The school refused to put me in a higher age group on a point of dogma (what normally occurs in such cases), and thus eventually refused to educate me. I got a lot of discrimination and abuse and as a little boy I didn't understand what was going on, normally it was along the lines of if something was stolen I was lying or disruptive even if I could prove the theft. I only got clues as to that on returning later at an order age. This isn't the point here, except to say how do you catch this fethers who can say what they want in classrooms.
I have heard of similar experiences of a friends families kids in Birmingham. Military family, therefore 'evil baby-killer reactionary family', doing things like preventing the children from doing studies on 'what daddy does for a living' on grounds that it is inappropriate, might offend Moslems and other such crap. It goes deeper and worse than that, marking down, gross bias in advocation between pupils etc
I cannot easily bring out a record of extreme left wing bias in schools, normally its a child's testimony. The relevance of this is because an atheist bias in education is even harder to establish. Especially where there is already an ongoing watchdog to limit religious interaction in schools in the US. Please remember that while bias in teaching can go either way there normally is an overview dogma which shows which way it goes. Right wing bias teachers wont go far in the left wing state schools system, political correctness will root out and label them. Likewise a religious bias in schools will also likely raise the same problems as it goes against the prevailing dogma. However the concept of religion is nonsense can come out quietly at any moment, and be attached to the general teaching method.
Teachers are human, so they bring their bias with them, not all are professional in their conduct though. This would be fine if there was no prevailing dogma, left and right would balance each other out, in fact I went to a good school afterwards which was politically neutral, this didn't mean politically absent, you could find the left and right wing teachers and they proposed their views in balance. This was encouraged as it helped teach us to think for ourselves. This is not so easy in a dogmatic school.
Now with the current campaign in the US to use legislation to ensure religion is outside of secular school teaching the dogma wind flows one way. Monitored by atheist watchdogs for compliance. If a child asks why is assembly something we should not have, what would the atheist monitor say to them? Please also remember that a lot of people who would fervently say stuff like "Blah blah, genetics, blah, natural selection, blah -- and this proves that all religions are false!!" that are unaware of their actual religious fanatacism. So you get religious fanatics in the system, in stealth mode, which should alarm anyone.
I don't have a problem with a child's testimony, it is valid in court, however without some kind of evidence all of your examples are just anecdotal or even supposition.
If there are no actual, documented examples of science being used as a means of furthering atheism in the classroom, I would suggest it is not unfair to suppose that this would be because any such examples are exceedingly rare.
I'm not going to say non-existent, because there are hundreds of thousands of schools in the US and UK.
Orlanth wrote:
Atheist fundamentalism is about 'making religion go away for the betterment of everyone',
No, that's incorrect. Atheist fundamentalism is about dispelling the belief in God, or theism. Often this is taken to be equivalent to religion, but they are not the same thing. For example, you'll often find that strident atheists are just as hostile towards people that believe in some undefined (nonreligious) divinity as those that follow an explicitly Christian, Muslim, or Jewish God.
The natural aversion that most strident atheists feel towards religion is a direct result of the popular, Western tendency to refer to religion as something that is necessarily theistic; which is itself a natural outgrowth of the Abrahamic tradition that dominates this part of the world. Moreover, to paraphrase one of my more aggressive friends: "When you're fighting for what's right, you don't stop to pay attention to details, you attack the heart of the problem and leave the rest to be cleaned up in the aftermath." The point being that any push against religion is nothing more than a reflection of rhetorical necessity given the context of today, and not a particularly effective means of defining an actual belief system.
Crom wrote:I don't get what an Atheist Fundamentalist actually is, if it is someone that devoutly believes in nothing, isn't that just Nihilism?
A fair enough question that demands answer, this answer has evolved over time with result of past discussions with more level minded atheists and theists alike here on Dakka.
Some atheists believe 'in nothing', these atheists like to say that it is a 'lack of belief' not a 'belief in lack'. Some here certainly believe this is true of themselves. I do not fully agree because thinking about something on a conscious level includes a choice of believing in it or not, and that a true 'no opinion' option only applies if one never thinks about a subject. Both arguments hold some merit, but let us assume out of fairness and brevity that one can have a 'lack of belief' without a 'belief in lack', as many have stated their personal case for such here on Dakka; after all it would by hypocritical for a Christian not to accept 'religious testimony' as evidence, even if those who give such testimony do not consider it religious.
However in any case people who profess a 'lack of belief' are not relevant to the greater discussion on atheist fundementalism, because those are by definition not the atheists one needs to worry about. If someone who has a 'lack of belief', or a very loose fitting denial (depending ones point of view), is at most a half-hearted atheist. This does not necessarily mean they are half-headed, so the analogy of half-hearted works fine.
Then there is the other kind. You see an active 'belief in lack' is the other side of atheism, whether this is an intentionally permanent choice to reject the divine or a matter of 'I actively won't believe unless proven'. Some atheists prefer to think that a 'lack of belief' is the true status of an atheist, probably because they relate their own good nature and open mindedness as attributes of atheism in general, however with exposure to examples of known atheist fanaticism it is easy to see that there is this other side to atheism. Such people who have a 'belief in lack' have claim to a more hearty atheism, but have essentially made an active religious faith choice* in doing so. If I may put it crudely, those with an active 'belief in lack' join the 'faith of no-God'. Such people are often very evident, we see them here on Dakka and elsewhere in life. Sadly a large proportion become fanatics, not due to any inherent badness of the faith choice compared to other faith choices, but because as atheism is typically seen as not a religion so those who follow an active atheism can fall into the mental trapping of religious fanaticism more strongly than many theists because they may be unaware of their own growing religiosity as religiosity and make no attempts to backtrack from fundamentalism as most thinking theists learn they need to do. The catalyst of this change is normally due to a well deserved disdain for other forms of religious fundamentalism, the universe is not without irony. However it is also compounded by 'atheistic science' which due to its scientific basis has authority and is plausible at first look but due to the blindness of atheist fundamentalism fail to see that science is itself neutral, it speaks only for the mundane and not for the spiritual and passes no comment on the existence or absence of divine order as a result. This blindness comes about because unfortunately atheist fundamentalists are not the only fundamentalists out there, and those others often say the most outrageous things disprovable by science, or even without science, which gives the easy illusion that science itself is a defender of the atheist cause.
* From a Chrsitian perspective rather than a general theist perspective every atheist has made an active atheistic decision because the decision to accept Christ or not is active, any 'not-yes' is considered a de facto 'no'. However this and previous comment on this subject do not take that directly into account in a general theism vs atheism philosophical discussion as they would impose spectific personal sub-beleifs rather than the general issue, which I cannot fairly do, no matter how important they appear to me..
Well, that was quite an interesting take on atheism. I am still trying to process it all, but I think the word 'fundamentalist' is probably not exactly the right choice. I have seen atheists push an agenda, I have read about them congregating in a group, etc. However, I don't see them bombing places, committing murder in the name of no-God, oppressing people and so forth like many other major religions today. Can you cite examples of atheists being a danger and menace to society?
Fundamentalism means a return to basic principles, which in aetheism is that there is no God. As an aethist there is no practice or interpretation of scripture to adhere to or interpret that I know of.
No one converted me there are no meetings to attend.
There maybe aetheists that prosletyse in the manner of evangelists and appear very dogmatic and go to meetings.
Can you cite examples of atheists being a danger and menace to society?
Stalin. Pol Pot. Chairman Mao.
There good people and bad people. Some of the good people are religious and some of them are not. Some of the bad people are religious and some of them are not.
The thread isn't about the merits of atheism and religion.
It is about the merits of Young Earth Creation / Intelligent Design and the scientific theory of evolution as a means of explaining different species.
Can you cite examples of atheists being a danger and menace to society?
Stalin. Pol Pot. Chairman Mao.
There good people and bad people. Some of the good people are religious and some of them are not. Some of the bad people are religious and some of them are not.
The thread isn't about the merits of atheism and religion.
It is about the merits of Young Earth Creation / Intelligent Design and the scientific theory of evolution as a means of explaining different species.
Can you cite examples of atheists being a danger and menace to society?
Stalin. Pol Pot. Chairman Mao.
There good people and bad people. Some of the good people are religious and some of them are not. Some of the bad people are religious and some of them are not.
The thread isn't about the merits of atheism and religion.
It is about the merits of Young Earth Creation / Intelligent Design and the scientific theory of evolution as a means of explaining different species.
They did not kill in the name of no-God, they weren't doing what they did for atheist reasons. They were men that wanted power and control at any cost. My question was specifically what man does grotesque things in the name of atheism? Just because some bad people may have been atheists, their reasoning and justification for what they did was not because they were doing it for atheism. Where as in the name of a God, so many bad things have been done and that is the only justification used.
Someone mentioned a few pages back the dangerous atheists out there, as if they were implying an atheist agenda to conquer in the name of no-God or atheism.
See what you are getting at but it is a bit more subtle.
In UK schools we still teach Religious Education as well, for the most part, teaching evolutionary science.
Under the regimes referred to above religion was not taught and even banned outright.
The killings were done in the name of protecting a secular and atheistic pholosophy. I don't know but assume Stalin never spouted that he was moulding the Soviet state in the name of atheism, but rather Communism, the atheism is implicit.
But they did not allow any creation myths to be taught in schools afaik
Can you cite examples of atheists being a danger and menace to society?
Stalin. Pol Pot. Chairman Mao.
There good people and bad people. Some of the good people are religious and some of them are not. Some of the bad people are religious and some of them are not.
The thread isn't about the merits of atheism and religion.
It is about the merits of Young Earth Creation / Intelligent Design and the scientific theory of evolution as a means of explaining different species.
They did not kill in the name of no-God, they weren't doing what they did for atheist reasons. They were men that wanted power and control at any cost. My question was specifically what man does grotesque things in the name of atheism? Just because some bad people may have been atheists, their reasoning and justification for what they did was not because they were doing it for atheism. Where as in the name of a God, so many bad things have been done and that is the only justification used.
Someone mentioned a few pages back the dangerous atheists out there, as if they were implying an atheist agenda to conquer in the name of no-God or atheism.
I don't think I can agree fully about Stalin. Some say that he killed Christians because of Communism, however, many Christians supported Communism in Russia. Stalin killed them because he believed that Religion was incompatible with Marxism, After all, Marx himself wasn't exactly a huge fan of religion.
So technically yes, he did kill people in the name of no god.
Or can we say that many religious people that have caused violence are no different? Do you really think that all the religious fueds in the past have to do with the actual religion, or because the people in them wanted power?
Can you cite examples of atheists being a danger and menace to society?
Stalin. Pol Pot. Chairman Mao.
There good people and bad people. Some of the good people are religious and some of them are not. Some of the bad people are religious and some of them are not.
The thread isn't about the merits of atheism and religion.
It is about the merits of Young Earth Creation / Intelligent Design and the scientific theory of evolution as a means of explaining different species.
They did not kill in the name of no-God, they weren't doing what they did for atheist reasons. They were men that wanted power and control at any cost. My question was specifically what man does grotesque things in the name of atheism? Just because some bad people may have been atheists, their reasoning and justification for what they did was not because they were doing it for atheism. Where as in the name of a God, so many bad things have been done and that is the only justification used.
Someone mentioned a few pages back the dangerous atheists out there, as if they were implying an atheist agenda to conquer in the name of no-God or atheism.
I don't think I can agree fully about Stalin. Some say that he killed Christians because of Communism, however, many Christians supported Communism in Russia. Stalin killed them because he believed that Religion was incompatible with Marxism, After all, Marx himself wasn't exactly a huge fan of religion.
So technically yes, he did kill people in the name of no god.
Or can we say that many religious people that have caused violence are no different? Do you really think that all the religious fueds in the past have to do with the actual religion, or because the people in them wanted power?
Well, I already stated you cannot really hold a religion to blame, but only really the practitioner since after all they do have free will. I am just commenting on someone's post a few pages back about there being dangerous atheists is all. Stalin I suppose is a good example, but I would almost lean towards he did it for control and power. Then you have modern day clerics in the middle east blaming earth quakes on promiscuous women and western civilization, and some people believe it. That sort of negative impact of how dangerous fundamentalism can be is what I was going for. Sorry if I was off point.
Now back to creationists.....
If God is the true creator of life, the universe, and everything, then who created God? How was God himself created? Did he form from a single element?
As someone who does not live in the US I have to ask:
It is my understanding from this thread that there is no mandatory "religion/theology/religious history/whatever" subject in present-day US schools, correct? If yes, WHY? How on Earth is a person supposed to make a rational choice if he or she doesn't know what they're choosing between? I do agree that all kinds of religion should stay away from science though. Religion in schools should (IMO) be strictly from a historical, multi-perspective point of view. With that said I just don't get how atheists have supposedly "hijacked" evolution. It's an observable phenomenon that occurs on an everyday basis in nature. Claiming that believing in rational, repeatable experiments are promoting atheism is, put quite simply, an astounding level of ignorance.
Crom wrote:
If God is the true creator of life, the universe, and everything, then who created God? How was God himself created? Did he form from a single element?
As I said waaaaaaaay back on page 3, he could've made himself or, as someone else brought up, he exists outside of time and space and as such has no beginning or end.
AlmightyWalrus wrote:As someone who does not live in the US I have to ask:
It is my understanding from this thread that there is no mandatory "religion/theology/religious history/whatever" subject in present-day US schools, correct? If yes, WHY? How on Earth is a person supposed to make a rational choice if he or she doesn't know what they're choosing between? I do agree that all kinds of religion should stay away from science though. Religion in schools should (IMO) be strictly from a historical, multi-perspective point of view. With that said I just don't get how atheists have supposedly "hijacked" evolution. It's an observable phenomenon that occurs on an everyday basis in nature. Claiming that believing in rational, repeatable experiments are promoting atheism is, put quite simply, an astounding level of ignorance.
There are mentions of histories of religions in classes like world geography and social studies and such. It just never goes into the practice of it. It scratches the surface on some religions and cultures. At least it did when I was in high school back in the mid 90s.
Crom wrote:
If God is the true creator of life, the universe, and everything, then who created God? How was God himself created? Did he form from a single element?
As I said waaaaaaaay back on page 3, he could've made himself or, as someone else brought up, he exists outside of time and space and as such has no beginning or end.
This goes back to my comment about being ignostic. We cannot understand or properly describe and know and prove with math/science how time/space or the universe works. Therefore, it is sort of asinine in my opinion that we can explain that God was created by himself, or that God existed since the beginning and lives outside space and time. How does time and space work in the whole universe? Some stars we see at night are from distant galaxies which have taken billions of years for the light to travel to our skyline, yet we do not know how old they are, or if they still even exist.
The one thing physics does prove to us, is that there is only one reality. Everything is what it is. We just don't understand everything quite yet.
The one thing physics does prove to us, is that there is only one reality. Everything is what it is. We just don't understand everything quite yet.
Multiverse theory.
Multiverse theory may as well be science fiction though. I was referring to what we can already prove and know. Don't get me wrong, I think it is cool, but I also think it is highly lacking a lot of evidence to support any claims that multiple realities exist.
The one thing physics does prove to us, is that there is only one reality. Everything is what it is. We just don't understand everything quite yet.
Multiverse theory.
Multiverse theory may as well be science fiction though. I was referring to what we can already prove and know. Don't get me wrong, I think it is cool, but I also think it is highly lacking a lot of evidence to support any claims that multiple realities exist.
Of course, my mistake I forgot the multiverse theory was totally not supported by a large number of physicists nor was it a solution to various problems in the creation of a grand unified theory and clearly has no papers on how it could work.
AlmightyWalrus wrote:As someone who does not live in the US I have to ask:
It is my understanding from this thread that there is no mandatory "religion/theology/religious history/whatever" subject in present-day US schools, correct? If yes, WHY? How on Earth is a person supposed to make a rational choice if he or she doesn't know what they're choosing between? I do agree that all kinds of religion should stay away from science though. Religion in schools should (IMO) be strictly from a historical, multi-perspective point of view. With that said I just don't get how atheists have supposedly "hijacked" evolution. It's an observable phenomenon that occurs on an everyday basis in nature. Claiming that believing in rational, repeatable experiments are promoting atheism is, put quite simply, an astounding level of ignorance.
We get a historical education. We learn about how the religions were founded, and their importance to history. E.g. We learn about the rise of Islam and how it got so powerful. We learn what the Protestants were rebelling against etc. You are correct in that their is no dedicated theology or religious history class mandatory.
Orlanth wrote:
Why do people become Westboro Baptists? Its teachings are diametrically opposed to a lot of what Christianity stands for, the only way you can become one is if you had a sinister agenda - which can account for some - or you had no religious education and fell for vile lies. In all likelihood these lies are compounded by threats of damnation if you did not agree wholeheartedly with everything Phelps says. Phelps congregation had no knowledge ammo to resist, 1)and once someone is in a cult human nature means its very hard for them to leave.
What are scientilogy critics doing when they speak of Xenu? 2) Scientology critics are not in general out to kill the religion, though this may not account for Anonymous now with the 'never forgive, never forget' message, they are out to expose its teaching so that those in the inside understand. Plenty of ex-scientologists practice in the free zone and continue the moral teachings of their faith, but are now empowered against abuse.
We get cults here, but its nothing like the problem you get in the US, 3)and a lack of knowledge is the principle weakness a cult latches onto, that plus personal vulnerability - which is a universal factor, you will always find societal victims to recruit into cults.
Lets put christianity under the same microscope...
1) Once your in christianity, you're told you'll burn in hell if you don't believe, you're told not to question things... seems hard to get out.. fear is a good tool to control people
2) Critics/evolutionists/Atheists aren't trying to kill religion, simply trying to expose its teachings so that those inside understand...
3) Ahem... like lack of understanding of how evolution works? so your cult decides to fight against it?
Seems like you've got some good points... US atheists are just merely trying "to expose how you've been taught so you can understand... "
frgsinwntr wrote:Seems like you've got some good points... I'm, just merely trying "to expose how you've been taught so you can understand... "
As magnanimous as it is of you to try and deprogram the ignorant...
Based on your post you have a pretty poor understanding of Christian theology. It doesn't seem like you're qualified to be trying to expose what you think is wrong with it.
frgsinwntr wrote:1) Once your in christianity, you're told you'll burn in hell if you don't believe, you're told not to question things... seems hard to get out.. fear is a good tool to control people
First of all, what denomination are you referring to? Secondly, there is actually quite a bit more to it than that.
As for not questioning things, that's particularly misinformed. The Apostle Thomas, (aka Doubting Thomas, aka Saint Thomas) questioned plenty of things. Questioning what you are told by spiritual leaders has scriptural precedent. There's quite a bit in the Bible about false prophets; you're supposed to weigh what a leader is saying and decide if what they're telling you is correct.
frgsinwntr wrote:Seems like you've got some good points... I'm, just merely trying "to expose how you've been taught so you can understand... "
As magnanimous as it is of you to try and deprogram the ignorant...
Based on your post you have a pretty poor understanding of Christian theology. It doesn't seem like you're qualified to be trying to expose what you think is wrong with it.
12 years of catholic school under my belt. Try me.
frgsinwntr wrote:Seems like you've got some good points... I'm, just merely trying "to expose how you've been taught so you can understand... "
As magnanimous as it is of you to try and deprogram the ignorant...
Based on your post you have a pretty poor understanding of Christian theology. It doesn't seem like you're qualified to be trying to expose what you think is wrong with it.
12 years of catholic school under my belt. Try me.
I did, above. You're fast!
I can't speak to your personal experiences, but your grasp of theology seems shaky based on your posting here. Also, a "cult" is a very specific thing. Broadly applying the term to all religious organizations doesn't help the case that you're trying to make.
frgsinwntr wrote:1) Once your in christianity, you're told you'll burn in hell if you don't believe, you're told not to question things... seems hard to get out.. fear is a good tool to control people
First of all, what denomination are you referring to? Secondly, there is actually quite a bit more to it than that.
As for not questioning things, that's particularly misinformed. The Apostle Thomas, (i.e. Doubting Thomas, aka Saint Thomas) questioned plenty of things. Questioning what you are told by spiritual leaders has scriptural precedent. There's quite a bit in the Bible about false prophets; you're supposed to weigh what a leader is saying and decide if what they're telling you is correct.
Lets start with your "denomination" argument.
here are the tenents that define christianity as a whole.
1. Jesus Christ is the Only Way to Eternal Salvation With God the Father
2. We Are Saved by Grace Through Faith – Not by Works
3. Jesus Christ is the Son of God
4. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
5. The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ From the Grave
6. The Ascension of Jesus Christ
7. The Doctrine of the Trinity
8. The Holy Bible is the Inspired and Infallible Word of God
9. We Are Baptized With the Holy Spirit at the Moment of Salvation
10. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit
11. The Doctrine of Hell
12. The 2nd Coming of Jesus Back to our Earth
Let's see... Oh LOOK! #1 there ya go. Next?
# 2) you're right, there is not direct writing of these. There is a group Mob mentality. There is the exclusion of individuals and the scapegoating of those that disagree or debate with you. This is a case where the written, doesn't match the experience. Some examples: (http://atheism.about.com/od/godlessamericaamericans/p/ScapegoatAtheis.htm)
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Monster Rain wrote:
frgsinwntr wrote:
Monster Rain wrote:
frgsinwntr wrote:Seems like you've got some good points... I'm, just merely trying "to expose how you've been taught so you can understand... "
As magnanimous as it is of you to try and deprogram the ignorant...
Based on your post you have a pretty poor understanding of Christian theology. It doesn't seem like you're qualified to be trying to expose what you think is wrong with it.
12 years of catholic school under my belt. Try me.
I did, above. You're fast!
I can't speak to your personal experiences, but your grasp of theology seems shaky based on your posting here. Also, a "cult" is a very specific thing. Broadly applying the term to all religious organizations doesn't help the case that you're trying to make.
I'm very fast : )
Well, christianity started as one by their own admittance. They were a fringe group of Roman culture. ALL religions at one time or another are a cult. You don't just wake up one day and everyone is a different religion, it takes time to spread ideas (however wrong they may be). At one time Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion and christianity would be consisdered a cult. Want a modern day example? Mormons!
frgsinwntr wrote:Lets start with your "denomination" argument.
here are the tenents that define christianity as a whole.
1. Jesus Christ is the Only Way to Eternal Salvation With God the Father
2. We Are Saved by Grace Through Faith – Not by Works
3. Jesus Christ is the Son of God
4. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
5. The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ From the Grave
6. The Ascension of Jesus Christ
7. The Doctrine of the Trinity
8. The Holy Bible is the Inspired and Infallible Word of God
9. We Are Baptized With the Holy Spirit at the Moment of Salvation
10. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit
11. The Doctrine of Hell
12. The 2nd Coming of Jesus Back to our Earth
Let's see... Oh LOOK! #1 there ya go. Next?
I'm sorry, was the divinity of Christ the point of dispute? I thought we were talking about your statement from earlier about hell and whatnot. "Christianity" has many different denominations with varying concepts of hell. The main problem is that you focus on the negative aspects of what you were taught.
frgsinwntr wrote:Well, christianity started as one by their own admittance. They were a fringe group of Roman culture. ALL religions at one time or another are a cult. You don't just wake up one day and everyone is a different religion, it takes time to spread ideas (however wrong they may be). At one time Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion and christianity would be consisdered a cult.
That may be, but nowadays the world "cult" is generally understood to be a reference to a specific type of group with authoritarian mind control practices. There's a difference between a new religious movement and a cult.
I would just like to note that the Roman Catholic Church has the belief that you do need works...the sacraments are important to your spiritual well being.
Monster Rain wrote:Also, a "cult" is a very specific thing.
Not really. Lots of people use the word with great specificity, but they almost never agree with one another; its a pretty complicated idea, and often comes down to mere subjectivity.
Monster Rain wrote:Also, a "cult" is a very specific thing.
Not really. Lots of people use the word with great specificity, but they almost never agree with one another; its a pretty complicated idea, and often comes down to mere subjectivity.
In common usage of the word "cult" it has an implied meaning now.
While there is some debate on exactly what it means there are some points on which most credible sources agree. This is a good example of common themes:
All cults, according to Singer, share three elements: They revolve around charismatic leaders who focus veneration on themselves, rather than on the group's purpose; they employ authoritarian power structures; and they use covert, coordinated forms of thought persuasion in order to gain total control of the lives of their members. As illustration, Dr. Singer contrasts a cult-like organization with the United States Marine Corps-a simple, but effective illustration.
Dugan, Robert D., and Jeffrey M. Beaubien. "Cults in our Midst: The Hidden Menace in our Everyday Lives by Margaret Thaler Singer with Janja Lalich." Personnel Psychology 48.4 (1995): 948. ProQuest. Web. 27 Feb. 2011.
I'm sorry, was the divinity of Christ the point of dispute? I thought we were talking about your statement from earlier about hell and whatnot. "Christianity" has many different denominations with varying concepts of hell. The main problem is that you focus on the negative aspects of what you were taught.
Dogma covered your cult comment the same way I would.
As for the comment above, I'm pretty sure you misread what I am saying. Read this again.
1. Jesus Christ is the Only Way to Eternal Salvation With God the Father
This is why I said:
frgsinwntr wrote:
1) Once your in christianity, you're told you'll burn in hell if you don't believe, you're told not to question things... seems hard to get out.. fear is a good tool to control people.
Don't try to change my argument to a "divinity" of christ thing. I'm just pointing out that people who try to get out are told they're going to hell.
I'm sorry, was the divinity of Christ the point of dispute? I thought we were talking about your statement from earlier about hell and whatnot. "Christianity" has many different denominations with varying concepts of hell. The main problem is that you focus on the negative aspects of what you were taught.
Dogma covered your cult comment the same way I would.
You're both profoundly uninformed on the subject then.
frgsinwntr wrote:As for the comment above, I'm pretty sure you misread what I am saying. Read this again.
1. Jesus Christ is the Only Way to Eternal Salvation With God the Father
This is why I said:
frgsinwntr wrote:
1) Once your in christianity, you're told you'll burn in hell if you don't believe, you're told not to question things... seems hard to get out.. fear is a good tool to control people.
Don't try to change my argument to a "divinity" of christ thing. I'm just pointing out that people who try to get out are told they're going to hell.
lolwhut? You pointed out that people are saved through faith in Jesus Christ as a rebuttal to my statement that different denominations have different views on hell. You should read more slowly.
EDIT:
Maybe we did misunderstand each other. My statement, as noted above, was to say that not all Christian denominations are so big on brimstone.
As for not questioning things, that's particularly misinformed. The Apostle Thomas, (i.e. Doubting Thomas, aka Saint Thomas) questioned plenty of things. Questioning what you are told by spiritual leaders has scriptural precedent. There's quite a bit in the Bible about false prophets; you're supposed to weigh what a leader is saying and decide if what they're telling you is correct.
Yes, but a lot of churches try very hard to not mention that part. Thought begets Heresy.
frgsinwntr wrote:
Lets start with your "denomination" argument.
here are the tenents that define christianity as a whole.
1. Jesus Christ is the Only Way to Eternal Salvation With God the Father
2. We Are Saved by Grace Through Faith – Not by Works
3. Jesus Christ is the Son of God
4. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
5. The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ From the Grave
6. The Ascension of Jesus Christ
7. The Doctrine of the Trinity
8. The Holy Bible is the Inspired and Infallible Word of God
9. We Are Baptized With the Holy Spirit at the Moment of Salvation
10. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit
11. The Doctrine of Hell
12. The 2nd Coming of Jesus Back to our Earth
Actually, what you're talking about is Paulite Christianity. Christianity itself is merely the following of the teachings of Jesus. (which, are actually quite hard to find amidst all the revisions.) Jesus himself almost seems to downplay his divinity in the Synoptic Gospels, implying that his divinity isn't really what's important. (in several gospels that were 'trimmed' from the bible, it gets even less screen time, so to speak. Gospels where they focused on the teachings of Christ over the Divinity of Christ didn't mesh with the party line well, for some reason. Perhaps his opposition to organized religion made them a sticking point) Only in the canonically questionable Gospel of John (which may have been written three centuries later) does the divinity of Jesus really get hammered.
BaronIveagh wrote:Yes, but a lot of churches try very hard to not mention that part. Thought begets Heresy.
Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.
BaronIveagh wrote:Actually, what you're talking about is Paulite Christianity. Christianity itself is merely the following of the teachings of Christ. (which, are actually quite hard to find amidst all the revisions.)
Oh, all that jibba jabba about loving your neighbor and doing unto others as they do unto you? That's always conveniently forgotten when discussing these matters...
I'm sorry, was the divinity of Christ the point of dispute? I thought we were talking about your statement from earlier about hell and whatnot. "Christianity" has many different denominations with varying concepts of hell. The main problem is that you focus on the negative aspects of what you were taught.
Dogma covered your cult comment the same way I would.
You're both profoundly uninformed on the subject then.
frgsinwntr wrote:As for the comment above, I'm pretty sure you misread what I am saying. Read this again.
1. Jesus Christ is the Only Way to Eternal Salvation With God the Father
This is why I said:
frgsinwntr wrote:
1) Once your in christianity, you're told you'll burn in hell if you don't believe, you're told not to question things... seems hard to get out.. fear is a good tool to control people.
Don't try to change my argument to a "divinity" of christ thing. I'm just pointing out that people who try to get out are told they're going to hell.
lolwhut? You pointed out that people are saved through faith in Jesus Christ as a rebuttal to my statement that different denominations have different views on hell. You should read more slowly.
Let's take a step back here.
1) I post: Once your in christianity, you're told you'll burn in hell if you don't believe, you're told not to question things... seems hard to get out.. fear is a good tool to control people.
You Post: First of all, what denomination are you referring to? Secondly, there is actually quite a bit more to it than that.
I respond (not going to repost all of them) pointing out that ALL christians have the following as the first tennet: Jesus Christ is the Only Way to Eternal Salvation With God the Father. I GUESS I assumed you could understand the fact that Being the "only way" is a method of control through being an authoritarian. Lets look again at that cult thing now that you're brought up to speed? K?
wikipedia wrote:
The word cult pejoratively refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered strange.[1] The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices. The narrower, derogatory sense of the word is a product of the 20th century, especially since the 1980s, and is considered subjective. It is also a result of the anti-cult movement which uses the word in reference to groups seen as authoritarian, exploitative and that are believed to use dangerous rituals or mind control. The word implies a group which is a minority in a given society.
The popular, derogatory sense of the word has no currency in academic studies of religions, where "cults" are subsumed under the neutral label of the "new religious movement", while academic sociology has partly adopted the popular meaning of the word.[2][3][4]
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BaronIveagh wrote:
frgsinwntr wrote:
As for not questioning things, that's particularly misinformed. The Apostle Thomas, (i.e. Doubting Thomas, aka Saint Thomas) questioned plenty of things. Questioning what you are told by spiritual leaders has scriptural precedent. There's quite a bit in the Bible about false prophets; you're supposed to weigh what a leader is saying and decide if what they're telling you is correct.
Monster rain said this. Not me
Yes, but a lot of churches try very hard to not mention that part. Thought begets Heresy.
frgsinwntr wrote:
Lets start with your "denomination" argument.
here are the tenents that define christianity as a whole.
1. Jesus Christ is the Only Way to Eternal Salvation With God the Father
2. We Are Saved by Grace Through Faith – Not by Works
3. Jesus Christ is the Son of God
4. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
5. The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ From the Grave
6. The Ascension of Jesus Christ
7. The Doctrine of the Trinity
8. The Holy Bible is the Inspired and Infallible Word of God
9. We Are Baptized With the Holy Spirit at the Moment of Salvation
10. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit
11. The Doctrine of Hell
12. The 2nd Coming of Jesus Back to our Earth
Actually, what you're talking about is Paulite Christianity. Christianity itself is merely the following of the teachings of Christ. (which, are actually quite hard to find amidst all the revisions.)
I find it very hard to find any christian that would not agree with #1 which is why I picked it out.
No, I'm not trolling. If I was, believe me, you'd know.
Yeah, that article completely makes my point about 4 paragraphs down. Look under "Study of Cults." Either way, citing wikipedia isn't the accepted way to prove the truth of something.
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frgsinwntr wrote:Let's take a step back here.
1) I post: Once your in christianity, you're told you'll burn in hell if you don't believe, you're told not to question things... seems hard to get out.. fear is a good tool to control people.
You Post: First of all, what denomination are you referring to? Secondly, there is actually quite a bit more to it than that.
I respond (not going to repost all of them) pointing out that ALL christians have the following as the first tennet: Jesus Christ is the Only Way to Eternal Salvation With God the Father. I GUESS I assumed you could understand the fact that Being the "only way" is a method of control through being an authoritarian. Lets look again at that cult thing now that you're brought up to speed? K?
So you are deliberately missing the point I was making. Good to know.
No, I'm not trolling. If I was, believe me, you'd know.
Yeah, that article completely makes my point about 4 paragraphs down. Look under "Study of Cults." Either way, citing wikipedia isn't the accepted way to prove the truth of somethin.
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frgsinwntr wrote:Let's take a step back here.
1) I post: Once your in christianity, you're told you'll burn in hell if you don't believe, you're told not to question things... seems hard to get out.. fear is a good tool to control people.
You Post: First of all, what denomination are you referring to? Secondly, there is actually quite a bit more to it than that.
I respond (not going to repost all of them) pointing out that ALL christians have the following as the first tennet: Jesus Christ is the Only Way to Eternal Salvation With God the Father. I GUESS I assumed you could understand the fact that Being the "only way" is a method of control through being an authoritarian. Lets look again at that cult thing now that you're brought up to speed? K?
So you are deliberately missing the point I was making. Good to go.
As far as cherry picking paragraph 4 in one section and ignoring everything that goes before it I guess you're right, I can't seem to win that argument. You clearly found the golden bullet sentence. /sarcasm
No, I countered your point by showing its ALL sects of christianity and not specific to any single denomination. I'm not going to allow you to compartmentalize my argument into a little box where it can be disregarded. My point was that ALL christainity says that.
frgsinwntr wrote:As far as cherry picking paragraph 4 in one section and ignoring everything that goes before it I guess you're right, I can't seem to win that argument. You clearly found the golden bullet sentence. /sarcasm
Don't blame me for your failure to read your ironclad wikipedia proof of your statements, bro. I said there are accepted traits for groups that are characterized as cults. You found an article that pretty much said exactly what I was saying. To summarize, there are a lot of different definitions of a "cult" but there are similarities between groups that are characterized as cults that are recognized by people that are knowledgeable on the subject.
frgsinwntr wrote:No, I countered your point by showing its ALL sects of christianity and not specific to any single denomination. I'm not going to allow you to compartmentalize my argument into a little box where it can be disregarded. My point was that ALL christainity says that.
Says what, exactly?
You realize we aren't going to be able to get past this until you actually respond thoughtfully to a point I've made. That's how a conversation works.
frgsinwntr wrote:
I find it very hard to find any christian that would not agree with #1 which is why I picked it out.
In many early traditions, Jesus does not claim to be the Messiah. Remember that in Aramaic of the period, 'Son of God' meant a righteous person. Not literally a offspring of God.
Further, I'll point out that Enoch supposedly went to Heaven without going through Christ.
frgsinwntr wrote:
I find it very hard to find any christian that would not agree with #1 which is why I picked it out.
In many early traditions, Jesus does not claim to be the Messiah. Remember that in Aramaic of the period, 'Son of God' meant a righteous person. Not literally a offspring of God.
Further, I'll point out that Enoch supposedly went to Heaven without going through Christ.
And these would be considered by monster rains definition to be cults correct?
You realize we aren't going to be able to get past this until you actually respond thoughtfully to a point I've made. That's how a conversation works.
Sure! now let's clarify your point. Are you saying there are parts of christianity that don't believe jesus is the only way to be saved from hell?
Well, there actually are people that believe that Jesus is simply their "vehicle to the divine" and that there are other ways to get to heaven. According to Orlanth's post there is actually some basis for that, but it's probably outside the scope of this particular discussion.
What I was saying was that there are Christian sects that don't believe in hell at all, or that grace applies universally even without a profession of faith. My main issue, though, is your representation of Christian theology as "sign up or go to hell. Oh, and do what I say."
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frgsinwntr wrote:
BaronIveagh wrote:
frgsinwntr wrote:
I find it very hard to find any christian that would not agree with #1 which is why I picked it out.
In many early traditions, Jesus does not claim to be the Messiah. Remember that in Aramaic of the period, 'Son of God' meant a righteous person. Not literally a offspring of God.
Further, I'll point out that Enoch supposedly went to Heaven without going through Christ.
And these would be considered by monster rains definition to be cults correct?
I'll answer your question with a question: Does believing in any of these things involve the thought reform that is described in the article you cited?
Also, the apocryphal book of Enoch is referenced in the Book of Jude, which is canon. I always thought that was pretty cool.
You realize we aren't going to be able to get past this until you actually respond thoughtfully to a point I've made. That's how a conversation works.
Sure! now let's clarify your point. Are you saying there are parts of christianity that don't believe jesus is the only way to be saved from hell?
Well, there actually are people that believe that Jesus is simply their "vehicle to the divine" and that there are other ways to get to heaven. According to Orlanth's post there is actually some basis for that, but it's probably outside the scope of this particular discussion.
What I was saying was that there are Christian sects that don't believe in hell at all, or that grace applies universally even without a profession of faith. My main issue, though, is your representation of Christian theology as "sign up or go to hell. Oh, and do what I say."
So you agree then, that only fringe groups don't follow that tennent? And therefore for the majority Jesus is the only way to be saved (either by being a vehicle or other means)? What happens to you if you're not saved?
frgsinwntr wrote:
I find it very hard to find any christian that would not agree with #1 which is why I picked it out.
In many early traditions, Jesus does not claim to be the Messiah. Remember that in Aramaic of the period, 'Son of God' meant a righteous person. Not literally a offspring of God.
Further, I'll point out that Enoch supposedly went to Heaven without going through Christ.
And these would be considered by monster rains definition to be cults correct?
Technically all of Christianity during the first Century would qualify as a cult under his definition.
frgsinwntr wrote:
I find it very hard to find any christian that would not agree with #1 which is why I picked it out.
In many early traditions, Jesus does not claim to be the Messiah. Remember that in Aramaic of the period, 'Son of God' meant a righteous person. Not literally a offspring of God.
Further, I'll point out that Enoch supposedly went to Heaven without going through Christ.
And these would be considered by monster rains definition to be cults correct?
Technically all of Christianity during the first Century would qualify as a cult under his definition.
frgsinwntr wrote:So you agree then, that only fringe groups don't follow that tennent?
Well, the bit about being a "law unto themselves" is in the book of Romans, so I don't know how fringe that is. I also recall reading an interview with the head of the Episcopalian church ( I forget her name) where she basically said the same thing. So no, it's not just fringe groups at all.
frgsinwntr wrote:What happens to you if you're not saved?
Some say hell, some say eternal death (sheol, the grave, etc) some say everyone gets into heaven anyway. Who's right? I have no idea.
I'll answer your question with a question: Does believing in any of these things involve the thought reform that is described in the article you cited?
Also, the apocryphal book of Enoch is referenced in the Book of Jude, which is canon. I always thought that was pretty cool.
Since I almost missed this edit you did...
Sure. Overtime belief in these things AND the spreading of these ideas would include various kinds of thought reform. In fact, taking this point and following its source from wikipedia, I'd say that the fact that they discuss the cognitive impairment by trauma of joining can totally relate back on topic. Pushing ID into schools would DEF be thought reform as well as the thought reform being done to create "the discovery institute" to begin with!
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Monster Rain wrote:
frgsinwntr wrote:So you agree then, that only fringe groups don't follow that tennent?
Well, the bit about being a "law unto themselves" is in the book of Romans, so I don't know how fringe that is. I also recall reading an interview with the head of the Episcopalian church ( I forget her name) where she basically said the same thing. So no, it's not just fringe groups at all.
Can you find that interview to back your point? I'd be curious to read it. I'm finding it hard to believe that Christians don't believe Christ is their savior.
Monster Rain wrote:
frgsinwntr wrote:What happens to you if you're not saved?
Some say hell, some say eternal death (sheol, the grave, etc) some say everyone gets into heaven anyway. Who's right? I have no idea.
So yea, basically you're saved or OR screwed (hell, or eternal death). The basic person may say... Hmm I don't wanna be screwed. I'd better join up. Or... they may realize its a crock of gak and say.. its a control thing
frgsinwntr wrote:So you agree then, that only fringe groups don't follow that tennent?
Well, the bit about being a "law unto themselves" is in the book of Romans, so I don't know how fringe that is. I also recall reading an interview with the head of the Episcopalian church ( I forget her name) where she basically said the same thing. So no, it's not just fringe groups at all.
frgsinwntr wrote:What happens to you if you're not saved?
Some say hell, some say eternal death (sheol, the grave, etc) some say everyone gets into heaven anyway. Who's right? I have no idea.
I wouldn't buy too heavily into Romans. Paul never actually even met Jesus. He had a vision on the road to Damascus and later met with James and Peter for a few days. I wouldn't exactly call him a trustworthy source. (IIRC he had something of a blowup with Peter)
All cults, according to Singer, share three elements: They revolve around charismatic leaders who focus veneration on themselves, rather than on the group's purpose; they employ authoritarian power structures; and they use covert, coordinated forms of thought persuasion in order to gain total control of the lives of their members. As illustration, Dr. Singer contrasts a cult-like organization with the United States Marine Corps-a simple, but effective illustration.
Dugan, Robert D., and Jeffrey M. Beaubien. "Cults in our Midst: The Hidden Menace in our Everyday Lives by Margaret Thaler Singer with Janja Lalich." Personnel Psychology 48.4 (1995): 948. ProQuest. Web. 27 Feb. 2011
.
So, every religion that exists?
We're probably not going to agree here, but suffice it to say that most faiths can be regarded as cults.
The "co-ordinated forms of thought persuasion in order to gain control of the lives of their members" is vaguely applicable to all things from little jihadist training camps to bible camp or youth group volleyball, or even just the fact of being raised by practicing parents. Check. All religions in some way or other do this.
"charismatic leaders..." (check, a given for public speakers to have any audience that isn't held captive) - except the pope but that's because he looks like Palpatine, not his fault... "who focus veneration on themselves rather than on the group's purpose" (pope's robes, lots of gold stuff, funny hat, extravagant fanfare every sunday mass - makes up for looking like the evil galactic emperor, so check he's back in too).
This one is nice and vague because of the words "true purpose", leaving it subjective and based on the opinion of who is to judge that. To some teenagers, the true purpose of bible camp is to be away from their churchey parents and sneak off to get some churchey nookie I would wager. Besides, anyone who is going to stand and deliver at a weekly speech, rally of the believers has got to be pretty full of themselves; even if it is all full of how humble and selfless they are. Public speaking is inherently narcisistic. SO again, Check. 2 out of 3 for everyone.
The only one where there seems varied is the bit about authoritarian power structures. This allows some religions to slip by because the power structure is not inherent in the religious teachings, just in the entire culture in exists within is a power structure. You can become a complete outcast from your family and the only culture you know (Hindu Indian woman I know comes to mind who has to deal with arranged marriage for instance) by shucking it off and calling horsegak, but then become a pariah, disowned, shunned, all that crap that people who grow up brainwashed by douchebaggery groups think matters.. The religion itself is not uthoritarian, but the culture it exists in is. Even something as simple as 'honor thy father' is second hand authoritarianism. What if your father is an ass? Too bad you are a sinner for not honoring him. Authoritarianism.. check.
So can a religion be named which does not in some way show all these three things?
Seems the difference between "cult" and "religion" is numbers. Also, similar to the difference between "terrorist" and "revolutionary".
Guitardian wrote:The "co-ordinated forms of thought persuasion in order to gain control of the lives of their members" is vaguely applicable to all things from little jihadist training camps to bible camp or youth group volleyball, or even just the fact of being raised by practicing parents. Check. All religions in some way or other do this.
"charismatic leaders..." (check, a given for public speakers to have any audience that isn't held captive) - except the pope but that's because he looks like Palpatine, not his fault... "who focus veneration on themselves rather than on the group's purpose" (pope's robes, lots of gold stuff, funny hat, extravagant fanfare every sunday mass - makes up for looking like the evil galactic emperor, so check he's back in too).
This one is nice and vague because of the words "true purpose", leaving it subjective and based on the opinion of who is to judge that. To some teenagers, the true purpose of bible camp is to be away from their churchey parents and sneak off to get some churchey nookie I would wager. Besides, anyone who is going to stand and deliver at a weekly speech, rally of the believers has got to be pretty full of themselves; even if it is all full of how humble and selfless they are. Public speaking is inherently narcisistic. SO again, Check. 2 out of 3 for everyone.
The only one where there seems varied is the bit about authoritarian power structures. This allows some religions to slip by because the power structure is not inherent in the religious teachings, just in the entire culture in exists within is a power structure. You can become a complete outcast from your family and the only culture you know (Hindu Indian woman I know comes to mind who has to deal with arranged marriage for instance) by shucking it off and calling horsegak, but then become a pariah, disowned, shunned, all that crap that people who grow up brainwashed by douchebaggery groups think matters.. The religion itself is not uthoritarian, but the culture it exists in is. Even something as simple as 'honor thy father' is second hand authoritarianism. What if your father is an ass? Too bad you are a sinner for not honoring him. Authoritarianism.. check.
So can a religion be named which does not in some way show all these three things?
Seems the difference between "cult" and "religion" is numbers. Also, similar to the difference between "terrorist" and "revolutionary".
I'd say you've done well... then you said " Also, similar to the difference between "terrorist" and "revolutionary""
Thats a bit far... terrorists do their work simply to cause fear... revolutionary have purpose. therefore i'm going to outright disagree with your final analogy... It comes across as overly harsh and bashing
I meant that it depends on if you want to put it in a negative or positive light you call it one or the other term. I didn't mean to equate one as revolutionaries and one as terrorists, just that the term can be interchanged depending on which side you are on.
Orlanth wrote:Good argument for teaching theology is schools then. Because you have a very thin explanation of the Biblical teaching.
I imagine it would be, it's your faith and not mine, so I'd expect you and all other Christians would have a much deeper understanding.
But are you honestly claiming that the Bible doesn't spend a good bit of time talking about wealth and poverty, and which group God likes more?
Your long winded definition is the same as evolution with God not excluded. The idea simply put that 'we believe evolution isn't random but planned' explains evolution as well as randomness can because the 'designer' touch is non-detectable. It still remains a religious answer. The idea that randomness is guaranteed is also a religious answer because it is attributed within the system as atheism. A neutral response would be to say that evolution does not disprove the existance of God and is not inherently atheistic.
All of that has nothing to do with the simple fact that you didn't understand the origins of the term 'intelligent design' and it's place in the political dialogue, particularly in the US where people have used it to try and put creationist ideas into science classes.
Lawsuits get in the way of that because of dogmatic legislation regarding mentioning religious topics in the classroom. Consequently atheism is the only religious choice that gets a hearing, because even if the teacher is themselves teaching neutrally atheism will be attached elsewhere with impunity.
That's just nonsensical. Atheism doesn't get attached to anything. Not mentioning God is not atheism.
Saying 'we won the game because Jonny made that amazing kick on the siren' is not atheism, even though it doesn't mention the possiblity that God might have helped Jonny make that kick.
Because its a needless side issue. The legalese aspect is that ID was rejected in a test case because it was another variant of creationism. This is correct in my view because IDis creationism. The dogma within the US legal system, places and unfair divider on religious teaching, ignoring the fact that evolution has been hijacked by atheism. ID is an attempt to restore a balance because atheism is taught in the classrooms veiled as science.
You keep pretending intelligent design means something it doesn't. It does not mean 'guided evolution'. It expressly and explicitly means 'there is irreducible complexity in the design of creatures that cannot be explained by randomness and therefore evolution is wrong'.
Stop pretending otherwise.
Point explained earlier, the teacher does not need to, science does not need to. Atheism hijacks the message with no right of reply within the schools system. Atheists get away with this by relying on the myth that atheism isn't a religion and can thus be propogated within the schools system.
Teaching kids the basic facts about what we've observed about the universe is not religion is not teaching atheism. Telling kids that life evolved over billions of years is not scoring a point for the atheists, it's simply explaining to kids what we know about life.
Your idea that somehow atheism is taking over in schools is so deluded as to be almost beyond belief. An incredibly number of US citizens still express doubt over evolution as a concept, and they do this because of politically compromised highschool teaching.
The US needs to learn not to fear religious eduction, from a multi-point perspective.
The place of US teaching in schools is very tolerant. People can teach whatever they want about religion in private institutions, they can even proselytise their chosen faith in religious schools. In public schools you can teach about religion, but you cannot proselytise any particular faith. This is a perfectly tolerant approach, and exactly how things should be.
The problem then enters the system that some people really don't like the idea of being unable to proselytise their particular faith in school. So they invent new ways to sneak bible teachings back into school, and the result is that evolution and science in general are constantly attacked, hurting overall education.
Ignoring this problem, or attempting to appease these people won't see them lose political power, they won't stop until evolution is no longer taught, and the bibles are back in school.
I am pretty sure that european relgious education is the reason we dont have a Bible belt problem, or a lot of militant atheism in the education system.
To argue that is to pretend there was no bible belt in the US in the 1960s, when the bible was still taught in school.
Instead, it has everything to do with the nature of the religious institutions in the countries in question. The Church of England is culturally a very tolerant organisation (well, in England it is, some of the Anglican groups in Africa are as nutty as anyone) and it doesn't have any problem with the idea that God could be behind the creation of a billion year old Earth, in which life evolved over millions of years - if that's what the evidence suggests about the Earth and about life. In the US the evangelical churches will not tolerate such suggestions.
The only solution for this problem is for the evangelicals to come to the centre, they need to stop with the ridiculous insistance that God's Earth is 6,000 years old, and that there's scientific proof of such.
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Crom wrote:I don't get what an Atheist Fundamentalist actually is, if it is someone that devoutly believes in nothing, isn't that just Nihilism?
No. First up, there's no such thing as an atheist fundamentalist because there are no fundamental of atheism to believe in. Atheism can take the form of liberal humanism, technocratic futurism, absolute materialism, nihilsim and many other forms.
And they don't all end up with nihilsm because nihilism denies the existance of morals. There are many ways to form morals without relying on God.
I mean all atheists are fundamentalists because they all literally believe there is no God.
Are all religious people fundamentalist because they all believe there is a God. Or is fundamentalism about how you approach the tenets of your belief? And when atheism has no tenets to their faith, how is fundamentalist atheism even possible?
Militant, obnoxious atheism is all too common, I'll happily concede, but fundamental atheism is impossible by the definitions of the words.
So, really the problem isn't religion it is people. Humans are flawed in many ways. All of us have our flaws (I include myself as well), and we love justification for our flaws. Some people fear change, fear or hate something and they want to use religion, or another tool to justify their actions. Some humans are even more dangerous in the fact they will use the same systems to influence other people to take up action for the causes they believe in. Religions don't say bomb abortion clinics, or shoot abortion doctors. Religions don't say fly planes into buildings. Those are all made up by man, and made up by twisting religion around to fit their needs and causes. After all, religion is man made anyway.
True. But this goes both ways. Religions don't build soup kitchens, or offer shelter to the poor. People do thoese things too. They do the good things and the bad because they have the capacity for empathy and for love, and also because they have the capacity for selfishness and hatred.
To an extent religion, like all philosophies can encourage the growth of empathy and love, or it can grow selfishness and hatred. Is it not possible that a religion can focus on empathy, and use that to inspire its members to build a soup kitchen? Similarly, a religion might teach hatred, and that might inspire a member to go and blow up an abortion clinic?
People just need to realize the concept of my freedom stops where your's begins, and a lot of this political agenda nonsense with religion could possibly go away.
I think the bigger issue is that people don't realise religious freedom isn't a zero sum thing. That is, your freedom to worship doesn't impact my freedom in any way. As a result, they often feel the only way to protect their own freedom to worship is to control other people's.
They just don't get that I can believe what I want to believe, and you can believe what you want to believe, and we can not only get by without infringing each other's rights, we can get along and even be friends.
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Orlanth wrote:This leaves another related comment or question often brought up. I will try and get wording from it from an atheist site...hold on....
I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' 'No,' said the priest, 'not if you did not know.' 'Then why,' asked the Eskimo earnestly, 'did you tell me?' - Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974
I don't know if the book was atheistic or just the character. I know that this quote and others like it often surface.
The book isn't 'atheistic'. It's a non-fiction account that's all about understanding nature, and thereby understanding God.
sebster wrote:
That's just nonsensical. Atheism doesn't get attached to anything. Not mentioning God is not atheism.
Look around you, how many times to you see evolution placed as atheistic doctrine. It even happens here, repeatedly, its a common meme.
sebster wrote:
You keep pretending intelligent design means something it doesn't. It does not mean 'guided evolution'. It expressly and explicitly means 'there is irreducible complexity in the design of creatures that cannot be explained by randomness and therefore evolution is wrong'.
Stop pretending otherwise.
Evidently I understand better than you do.
Guided evolution and intelligent design are one and the same. The definition you gave accounts for both theories. The only minute difference is that ID doesn't like calling the process 'evolution', for political reasons. Non-random evolution is still evolution, take say piolitcal evolution, or the evolution of games design, this isn't random, its certainly planned, its also evolution. Now some would like to say ID is not evolution for political reasons, to get around loopholes and attempt to get ID on the teaching agenda but its a play at semantics that is all. A rebranded theory is not a different theory.
sebster wrote:
Teaching kids the basic facts about what we've observed about the universe is not religion is not teaching atheism. Telling kids that life evolved over billions of years is not scoring a point for the atheists, it's simply explaining to kids what we know about life.
You are assuming a neutral setting which is not possible, so atheism is allowed to be attached to the message under the guise that 'atheism is not religion', while a right of response is often prohibited. This is the issue.
sebster wrote:
Your idea that somehow atheism is taking over in schools is so deluded as to be almost beyond belief.
I am not deluded, partly because I didnt say atheism is 'taking over'. You just like to think I did, its easier to ignore a reasoned reponce if you can make out in your own head that its a hysterical one. As you said there are plenty of people in the eduction system who are young earth creationists.
sebster wrote:
To argue that is to pretend there was no bible belt in the US in the 1960s, when the bible was still taught in school.
Perhaps our system was fixed in the 60's too. Most likely in fact, in the UK at least the general philosophy towards education on this and other issues was fairly sound, its only recently it got dogmaticsed.
sebster wrote:
Instead, it has everything to do with the nature of the religious institutions in the countries in question. The Church of England is culturally a very tolerant organisation (well, in England it is, some of the Anglican groups in Africa are as nutty as anyone) and it doesn't have any problem with the idea that God could be behind the creation of a billion year old Earth, in which life evolved over millions of years - if that's what the evidence suggests about the Earth and about life. In the US the evangelical churches will not tolerate such suggestions.
This coems down to a polarised religious education, part of the benefit of non politicisation of religious education to allow a multi point perspective is not only to allow views on atheism vs other faiths to be viewed fairly but so people have a better understanding of those faiths.
There are fundamentalists here too though, the main difference is that they are more discrete because some of the biblical teaching as sunk in. Stuff like creationism is a side issue, salvation is the core issue, something most fundamentalists in the US ignore. Here in the UK there are fundamentalists who are young earth creationists and biblical Zionists, usually the latter are the ones who cause problems, but they only profess their views, forcefully I might add, to the churched. There is a logic to that, is that its doesn't matter if an unbeliever believes in evolution or creation or not, they don't believe therefore why bother with a subset of that belief. I am sure that bit og logic is not beyond US fundamentalists either, but in the US the difference is that a political points scoring on creation vs evolution drives people to be vocal. The only time I encounter creation vs evolution personally, other than these threads is if someone is trolling for an argument.
In any case you get the same sort of people botyh sides of the atlantic, only fewer over here and a little better behaved.
sebster wrote:
The only solution for this problem is for the evangelicals to come to the centre, they need to stop with the ridiculous insistance that God's Earth is 6,000 years old, and that there's scientific proof of such.
Evangelicals are not the problem fanatics/fundamentalists are, there is a difference.
However the move needs to be made on both sides.
sebster wrote:
No. First up, there's no such thing as an atheist fundamentalist because there are no fundamental of atheism to believe in. Atheism can take the form of liberal humanism, technocratic futurism, absolute materialism, nihilsim and many other forms.
You are overanalysing this.
The word fundamentalism has changed in meaning over recent years, mostly thanks to press techniques on how to describe religious extremism without aggravating matters. Fanatic and extremist are more accurate words but might cause further offense but most fanatics are also fundamentalists, so that word was used for convenience and has since stuck.
The original definition of fundamentalist is someone who believe in highlighting the fundamental, a 'back to basics' philosophy, fundamentalism need not be related to religion, though it usually is. The reason people become fundamentalists is in order to avoid the trappings and confusion of higher levels of a philosophy to concentrate on core issues. While not actually called as such a martial arti student who strives to master the most basic katas at ghe expense of progressing to learn more complex ones is following a fundamentalist philosophy. You can have fundamentalism is science too, going back to concentrating on pure maths etc, or simple chemical structures.
In fact fundamentalism is a healthy idea in most cases because the deepest truths often appear in the most basic components, whether we be talking about a simple martial arts move, elementary geometry, basic tenets of a religion etc.
That isn't what the word means anymore though. I certainly wouldn't use it in its original meaning anymore no more than I would claim to be 'gay', which in proper English means 'happy'.
sebster wrote:
True. But this goes both ways. Religions don't build soup kitchens, or offer shelter to the poor. People do thoese things too. They do the good things and the bad because they have the capacity for empathy and for love, and also because they have the capacity for selfishness and hatred.
However teaching of some relgions place emphasis on social care stronger than others. Catholics in particular do a lot of charity work, there are very few pentecostal or evangelical soup kitchens, their focus is elsewhere, usually evangelism.
Islam includes charity as one of its central tenets, or pillars, so Islamic charity is disproportionately common also.
So yes due to the emphasis of the teaching some relgions do different things, I don't think Catholics or Moslems 'care more' per se.
sebster wrote:
I think the bigger issue is that people don't realise religious freedom isn't a zero sum thing. That is, your freedom to worship doesn't impact my freedom in any way. As a result, they often feel the only way to protect their own freedom to worship is to control other people's. They just don't get that I can believe what I want to believe, and you can believe what you want to believe, and we can not only get by without infringing each other's rights, we can get along and even be friends.
When I see one point of view defended by accusing a collective failure to listen on the part other parties, it is usually because the one complaining isn't listening either.
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BaronIveagh wrote:
Howard A Treesong wrote:
BaronIveagh wrote:Those are both entirely in the eye of the beholder. My late great uncle spent most of his young life blowing up parts of Eire (over 40 bombings) and murdering English army personnel in the middle of the night (or occasionally broad daylight). According to the protestants and English that made him a terrorist. According to himself and the IRA he was a freedom fighter.
Armed rebellion in democracy is criminal. The division between terrorist and freedom fighter can be partly down to perspective and which side you favour, but the IRA are hardly akin to the french resistance however much they would like to think themselves, the UK isn't a totalitarian state after all.
I hate to let you know, but England quite happily put Irishmen in camps on suspicion without trial and caused the deaths of far more Irish civilians then the Nazi's did French. What's the difference between driving starving civilians from thier homes to their deaths for fun and profit in countryside in Cork and in the city of Warsaw? A cute mustache and snappy uniforms.
This thread isn't about plastic paddies. Advocate terrorism somewhere else please.
I believe in humanity. I believe in advancement, kindness, co-operation, learning, improving the quality of life of myself and others, charity, truth, kittenz, beer, sex, and so on. I believe in the value of lots of things. None of them require supernatural force, and none are nihilistic. I think atheists all get lumped as nihilistic, amoral and lacking values by many people of faith. Maybe the same people of faith who assume that atheism is 'taking over' the schools because we don't have prayer in them. I can have a sense of good-and-evil without unicorns-and-dragons existing, money without leprechauns, and I can exist without an imaginary friend making it so.
sebster wrote:
That's just nonsensical. Atheism doesn't get attached to anything. Not mentioning God is not atheism.
Actually atheism gets attached to science all the time. For some reason everything written by scientists seems to rile up Organized Religion, from Galileo to Darwin to Watson & Crick. Of course, mind you, that last one does let us play at being God, so I might suppose they have a point there...
The point is, and many great thinkers have pointed this out, Science does not preclude God, it just shows how the universe works.
And, to my Christian associates: the Bible is not a literal truth. Stop trying to make it one. It's the wikipedia of Christianity.
See, the early Gospels all seem to derive from two sources. One is the book of Mark. The other seems to have been a sort of transcription of the teachings of Jesus from within his lifetime. If you analyze Luke and Matthew in the Greek. it becomes apparent that both books had very little unique content and were made by lifting bits from Mark and another source which may be the document referenced by Papias of Hierapolis in his Interpretations of the Sayings of the Lord. Luke also obliquely mentions the existence of another work or works that he sought out to cross reference.
Personally, I toss anything by Paul. When you dig into the real history of the man, he was a scam artist under a veneer of religion.
Guitardian wrote:I believe in humanity. I believe in advancement, kindness, co-operation, learning, improving the quality of life of myself and others, charity, truth, kittenz, beer, sex, and so on. I believe in the value of lots of things. None of them require supernatural force, and none are nihilistic. I think atheists all get lumped as nihilistic, amoral and lacking values by many people of faith. Maybe the same people of faith who assume that atheism is 'taking over' the schools because we don't have prayer in them. I can have a sense of good-and-evil without unicorns-and-dragons existing, money without leprechauns, and I can exist without an imaginary friend making it so.
I pity you then. I don't espouse the idea of teaching religion in schools, because true faith is from within. The idea of indoctrinating children to faith is abhorrent. However, mocking faith by comparing God to unicorns and leprechauns puts the lie to everything you just said about not being nihilistic and lacking in values. If you actually believed in all those things you said earlier, then accepting that others do not believe as you do would be second nature.
Crom wrote:
Multiverse theory may as well be science fiction though. I was referring to what we can already prove and know.
No, that's not right.
The idea that there is only one universe is just as close to SF as the idea that there exist multiple universes.
You were referring to knowledge and perception only for the purpose of turning inference into implication.
In the world of physics there is only one reality. Now in philosophy, like chan buddhism, and everything is just an illusion and nothing is as it seems is nothing near science. All scientific documentation and papers referring to multiple realities, or parallel universes is quite a stretch of the imagination using known frameworks as a basis to prove, that it is possible. However, that is the extent of where you can get with that. We know gravity exists, it is now scientific law. We have laws of thermodynamics and they have not yet been broken. These things can be simulated and proven to exist. Mutliple universes cannot.
The idea that there is only one universe is all we got to go on for now, and that is what I am going to stick with. You can hardly parallel believing in 1 universe is just as science fiction as believing in multiple. I already know the universe I live in exists.
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No. First up, there's no such thing as an atheist fundamentalist because there are no fundamental of atheism to believe in. Atheism can take the form of liberal humanism, technocratic futurism, absolute materialism, nihilsim and many other forms.
And they don't all end up with nihilsm because nihilism denies the existance of morals. There are many ways to form morals without relying on God.
In regards to religion, fundamentalists are creationists and think the bible is absolute, 100% correct and a complete history of the world. However, a fundamentalist is also someone who adheres by a strict set of principles. To give an example a space marine is a fundamentalist in the fact that he only serves and believes in the Emporer God. He adheres to a strict set of principles. Atheism is the belief that there is no God, no higher power. So really you are a fundamentalist if you are an atheist by definition of the word itself. By the simple fact you are adhering to a strict set of principles and in this case, that there is no God.
Fundamentalists are often tossed in the same category as crazy, violent, or part of a movement which can seem damaging to society and to human life. Like the Army Of God for example, and how some of their members have bombed abortion clinics and assassinated abortion doctors. I brought up the fundamentalist atheist part only because (many pages back now) someone mentioned that there are dangerous fundamentalist atheists out there. They were trying to parallel it to what I mentioned, and I find it not a good comparison. You don't see atheists blowing up churches in the name of science.
Orlanth wrote:Look around you, how many times to you see evolution placed as atheistic doctrine. It even happens here, repeatedly, its a common meme.
Atheism also gets attached to National Socialism. There are all kinds of ridiculous because people in general have poorly considered political views.
But people believing silly things doesn't make them true.
Evidently I understand better than you do.
No, your understanding is terrible. You've had days to go off and actually read about these concepts and actually learn something, actually find out what these terms mean instead of making up stuff in your own head. Here we are in the information age, with all this knowledge at our fingertips, and you'd rather keep spamming nonsense over and over again instead of spending ten minutes learning what things actually mean.
Here's wiki to explain it to you; "Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution." "Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.""
The first accepts evolution as science has learned about it, and says 'God did that'. This form is not only fine with science, it embraces science.
The second looks to challenge or discredit evolution, using pseudo-scientific arguments. It denies that macro-evolution can exists. It denies that random processes can give form to structure. It denies that organisms as we currently see them could ever have formed from simpler organisms.
It iis the latter form that invents nonsense like the idea that dinosaurs eat coconuts. Do you get it now, can you let this go? They're two different concepts with very different beliefs and motives behind them. Can you please let go of the made thing inside your head and accept the actual realities of the situation now, please?
You are assuming a neutral setting which is not possible, so atheism is allowed to be attached to the message under the guise that 'atheism is not religion', while a right of response is often prohibited. This is the issue.
This only exists if you think there is some atheist agenda put forward in science class in the first place. Teaching kids that animals evolved from simple organisms to complex ones over millions of years is not teaching kids atheism.
I am not deluded, partly because I didnt say atheism is 'taking over'. You just like to think I did, its easier to ignore a reasoned reponce if you can make out in your own head that its a hysterical one. As you said there are plenty of people in the eduction system who are young earth creationists.
So they're not taking over, they're just getting to say their bit (even though their bit isn't mentioned at all) without the other side getting to explain their's... is that your point?
Because if I've got that right your point is very silly.
There are fundamentalists here too though, the main difference is that they are more discrete because some of the biblical teaching as sunk in. Stuff like creationism is a side issue, salvation is the core issue, something most fundamentalists in the US ignore. Here in the UK there are fundamentalists who are young earth creationists and biblical Zionists, usually the latter are the ones who cause problems, but they only profess their views, forcefully I might add, to the churched.
They're a lot quieter because there are so very few of them. There are so very few because by and large the church in the UK is more progressive, more committed to social causes and less to promoting religious dogma. Which in turns causes there to be less young earthers, which in turn makes them that much quieter, which means the church remains moderate, and around and around we go.
I am sure that bit og logic is not beyond US fundamentalists either, but in the US the difference is that a political points scoring on creation vs evolution drives people to be vocal. The only time I encounter creation vs evolution personally, other than these threads is if someone is trolling for an argument.
No, there is a real game going on in the US. There have been textbooks put into class that taught intelligent design (as in irreducibly complexity and all that non-science crap). The only thing that stopped this being taught to kids was a court of law. There is still constant lobbying to get this stuff taught to kids.
It's a serious issue in the US, because people are trying to make everyone's children dumber.
Evangelicals are not the problem fanatics/fundamentalists are, there is a difference.
True, not all evangelicals belief in intelligent design, and some folk from other groups believe it as well. But we'd playing games if we pretended the overwhelming number weren't part of some evangelical group or another.
However the move needs to be made on both sides.
If you mean jackhole atheists like the Dawkins fanclub need to stop being jackholes, then I agree, but feel the need to point out that despite all their noise and bluster these people remain entirely irrelevant to the political process. They're annoying, but they're not relevant.
If you mean science needs to allow for religious theories to be considered, then I absolutely disagree.
You are overanalysing this.
I think my level of analysis was just about right. The word fundamentalist has a meaning, and it's an important concept that people need to understand to get to grips with the nature of belief. If he meant another meaning he's now free to go back and try to reform his idea using the correct term, improving his ability to communicate his idea, and therefore his ability to discuss it.
The original definition of fundamentalist is someone who believe in highlighting the fundamental, a 'back to basics' philosophy, fundamentalism need not be related to religion, though it usually is. The reason people become fundamentalists is in order to avoid the trappings and confusion of higher levels of a philosophy to concentrate on core issues. While not actually called as such a martial arti student who strives to master the most basic katas at ghe expense of progressing to learn more complex ones is following a fundamentalist philosophy. You can have fundamentalism is science too, going back to concentrating on pure maths etc, or simple chemical structures.
More or less, sure, but the term has it's origins in religion and is still considered primarily in those terms.
But even still, how can one be an atheist fundamentalist. 'I don't believe there's a God' really doesn't have any fundamental or non-fundamental components.
In fact fundamentalism is a healthy idea in most cases because the deepest truths often appear in the most basic components, whether we be talking about a simple martial arts move, elementary geometry, basic tenets of a religion etc.
True, but the issue is that fundamentalism is a claim to be returning to the basic components of belief, but really often it isn't. Indeed, most of the time it's simply applying more fanatical conviction to components of the faith. There is a reason fundamentalism and fanaticism have gotten mixed up, afterall.
However teaching of some relgions place emphasis on social care stronger than others. Catholics in particular do a lot of charity work, there are very few pentecostal or evangelical soup kitchens, their focus is elsewhere, usually evangelism. Islam includes charity as one of its central tenets, or pillars, so Islamic charity is disproportionately common also. So yes due to the emphasis of the teaching some relgions do different things, I don't think Catholics or Moslems 'care more' per se.
Absolutely.
When I see one point of view defended by accusing a collective failure to listen on the part other parties, it is usually because the one complaining isn't listening either.
This isn't about them listening to me. This is about them reading their own damn constitution and realising what seperation of church and state actually means.
I've never heard evolution being touted as atheist doctrine. It must be something that happens a lot more in the USA than in the UK.
Intelligent Design isn't guided evolution. The core point of ID is that certain creatures or natural mechanisms are too complex to have evolved, therefore they must have been produced as a finished piece by an intelligent designer.
All evolution is guided by evolutionary pressures. That is the whole point of natural selection.
Monster Rain wrote:Or it's a natural byproduct of this type of conversation.
Athesim vs. Religion invariably ends up talking about teaching life origins in school and then you get this. Again.
Only because there are theme parks like the one in the OP that try to discredit evolution and replace it with ideas about dinosaurs eating coconuts. Seriously, if some militant atheist same along and said 'haha evolution disproves religion because we know life today evolved from primitive organisms' and the religious bloke replied with 'I know and I accept that we evolved from primitive organisms, but science cannot know why the pieces were put in place in order for life to evolve in that way' then the militant atheist would have nothing.
The conflict exists because some portion of Christians continue to launch into an attack on science.
sebster wrote:Only because there are theme parks like the one in the OP that try to discredit evolution and replace it with ideas about dinosaurs eating coconuts.
How seriously do you think people are taking that idea, other than people who are predisposed to believe silliness?
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sebster wrote:The conflict exists because some portion of Christians continue to launch into a wrongheaded attack on science.
Meh. Gotta agree with that.
I think Christians should focus on what the Bible says that they ought to.
Monster Rain wrote:How seriously do you think people are taking that idea, other than people who are predisposed to believe silliness?
I'd say not many. In fact, the idea is so silly I doubt many young earth creationists believe it, more that they just nod and try not to think about it too much*.
The problem, ultimately, isn't that a few people believe something this silly, it's that the people who do believe spam constant attacks on many parts of science. The result is a gradual wearing down of respect for science. Sure, not many people believe T-Rex's ate coconuts, but about half of US citizens doubt evolution, and that number is growing.
*I remember a guy who left the church of Scientology being asked if he was so indoctrinated into the church that he genuinely believed the stuff about Xenu and the intergalactic empire blowing people up to stop overpopulation, and he said "I didn't so much believe it, as accept it". And while I don't want to compare young earth creationism and scientology because, as much as I disagree with the anti-science element of young earth creationism, they aren't at all like the craziness of scientology, but on this point I think they're fairly close. There's so committed to their idea of biblical literalism that even when it leads to very silly things like T-Rex's eating coconuts they're willing to accept them.
frgsinwntr wrote:
I find it very hard to find any christian that would not agree with #1 which is why I picked it out.
In many early traditions, Jesus does not claim to be the Messiah. Remember that in Aramaic of the period, 'Son of God' meant a righteous person. Not literally a offspring of God.
Further, I'll point out that Enoch supposedly went to Heaven without going through Christ.
You mean another example of how the Bible is mis-interpretted history?
Kilkrazy wrote:
Monster Rain wrote:
sebster wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:I've never heard evolution being touted as atheist doctrine. It must be something that happens a lot more in the USA than in the UK.
Or, just possibly, it's the invention of people trying to create some kind of injustice to complain about, to make their side look better.
Or it's a natural byproduct of this type of conversation.
Athesim vs. Religion invariably ends up talking about teaching life origins in school and then you get this. Again.
This thread didn't start as an atheism vs religion thread, it started as an evolutionary science vs young earth creationism thread.
Evolution isn't an explanation of creation anyway. It is an explanation of the variation of species.
Haha... I was about to post this after I read the last 3 pages...
Crom wrote:
In the world of physics there is only one reality.
Yes, and in the world of physics "universe" does not mean the same thing it does in colloquial parlance. From that perspective "universe" references a body of space-time possessed of a homogeneous set of physical laws. There can, theoretically, exist more than one of these provided that they are themselves connected by a few discreet, principle objects.
Crom wrote:
Now in philosophy, like chan buddhism, and everything is just an illusion and nothing is as it seems is nothing near science.
No, that's also wrong. The idea that everything that we perceive is illusory is at the core of many scientific disciplines. In fact, it could be argued that's what the scientific method itself is about.
Crom wrote:
All scientific documentation and papers referring to multiple realities, or parallel universes is quite a stretch of the imagination using known frameworks as a basis to prove, that it is possible. However, that is the extent of where you can get with that. We know gravity exists, it is now scientific law. We have laws of thermodynamics and they have not yet been broken. These things can be simulated and proven to exist. Mutliple universes cannot.
No, it can't, but neither can a single universe. We can prove that this universe exists, and therefore that there must be at least one universe, but we cannot prove that there is only one universe.
Crom wrote:
The idea that there is only one universe is all we got to go on for now, and that is what I am going to stick with. You can hardly parallel believing in 1 universe is just as science fiction as believing in multiple. I already know the universe I live in exists.
You've argued two different things there. There is a distinction between believing in the existence of one thing, and believing in the existence of only one thing. For example, I might believe in the existence of one man and be though rational, but if I said that I believed in the existence of only one man I would be thought mad.
@Avatarform: Basically. Remember that the original texts were translated into Greek and that was what was spread. The problem is that, without the same social context, meanings are not the same. Consider the parable of the Good Samaritan. It has a lot more impact when you understand how much the people in Judea reviled the Samaritans. At the time in Judea, it was shocking and thought provoking. Outside of that, it loosed a lot of impact.
Frazzled wrote:Edit. Reopening. Offensive posts deleted by Frazzled. No attacks on other countries unless in jest or risk permanent suspension of your account.
The best of all is... all this mess began because someone told that T-rex ate coconuts.... incredible....
Frazzled wrote:Edit. Reopening. Offensive posts deleted by Frazzled. No attacks on other countries unless in jest or risk permanent suspension of your account.
The best of all is... all this mess began because someone told that T-rex ate coconuts.... incredible....
Frazzled wrote:Edit. Reopening. Offensive posts deleted by Frazzled. No attacks on other countries unless in jest or risk permanent suspension of your account.
The best of all is... all this mess began because someone told that T-rex ate coconuts.... incredible....
mattyrm wrote:You can attack the British though right?
If its good enough for my great great great great great great grandfather, its good enough for me. Vive Jackson! Vive New Orleans! Now go you steenking Englishmaan or I shall taunt you a second time.
Crom wrote:
In the world of physics there is only one reality.
Yes, and in the world of physics "universe" does not mean the same thing it does in colloquial parlance. From that perspective "universe" references a body of space-time possessed of a homogeneous set of physical laws. There can, theoretically, exist more than one of these provided that they are themselves connected by a few discreet, principle objects.
Crom wrote:
Now in philosophy, like chan buddhism, and everything is just an illusion and nothing is as it seems is nothing near science.
No, that's also wrong. The idea that everything that we perceive is illusory is at the core of many scientific disciplines. In fact, it could be argued that's what the scientific method itself is about.
Crom wrote:
All scientific documentation and papers referring to multiple realities, or parallel universes is quite a stretch of the imagination using known frameworks as a basis to prove, that it is possible. However, that is the extent of where you can get with that. We know gravity exists, it is now scientific law. We have laws of thermodynamics and they have not yet been broken. These things can be simulated and proven to exist. Mutliple universes cannot.
No, it can't, but neither can a single universe. We can prove that this universe exists, and therefore that there must be at least one universe, but we cannot prove that there is only one universe.
Crom wrote:
The idea that there is only one universe is all we got to go on for now, and that is what I am going to stick with. You can hardly parallel believing in 1 universe is just as science fiction as believing in multiple. I already know the universe I live in exists.
You've argued two different things there. There is a distinction between believing in the existence of one thing, and believing in the existence of only one thing. For example, I might believe in the existence of one man and be though rational, but if I said that I believed in the existence of only one man I would be thought mad.
OK, well this is going off topic and I admit theoretical physics is not my forte, but where exactly are you getting all this stuff? From my understanding, albeit limited, is that the whole concept of multiple realities and parallel universes is completely theoretical with no empirical evidence supporting such claims.
I mean I like the idea and recently became of fan of the new Dr Who series, but that is all science fiction.
In the world of physics there is only one reality.
In the world of Quantum physics there are quite a few more. I refer you to the many worlds interpretation, where not every reality even follows the same rules, depending on what order various things took place in the infinity small space of time following the big bang.
As far as proofs go, mathematically they exist. Actual physical evidence has not been gathered, per se, but it's real science not just science fiction.
Orlanth wrote:Look around you, how many times to you see evolution placed as atheistic doctrine. It even happens here, repeatedly, its a common meme.
Atheism also gets attached to National Socialism. There are all kinds of ridiculous because people in general have poorly considered political views.
But people believing silly things doesn't make them true.
Are you trying to tell me you cant find evidence of an attempt to generate a connection between atheist claims in the non-existance of God and evolution? Look harder, in fact look at all.
If it were once or twice, but its a major propaganda theme.
sebster wrote:
No, your understanding is terrible. You've had days to go off and actually read about these concepts and actually learn something, actually find out what these terms mean instead of making up stuff in your own head. Here we are in the information age, with all this knowledge at our fingertips, and you'd rather keep spamming nonsense over and over again instead of spending ten minutes learning what things actually mean.
Here's wiki to explain it to you;
"Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution."
"Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.""
The first accepts evolution as science has learned about it, and says 'God did that'. This form is not only fine with science, it embraces science.
The second looks to challenge or discredit evolution, using pseudo-scientific arguments. It denies that macro-evolution can exists. It denies that random processes can give form to structure. It denies that organisms as we currently see them could ever have formed from simpler organisms.
It iis the latter form that invents nonsense like the idea that dinosaurs eat coconuts. Do you get it now, can you let this go? They're two different concepts with very different beliefs and motives behind them. Can you please let go of the made thing inside your head and accept the actual realities of the situation now, please?
This is heavily quoted by wikipedia wghich appears to be where you are drawing your info from..
"Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution."
comes from that site.
It covers forur basic questions, the first of which is what is intelligent design as quoted above.
Is intelligent design theory incompatible with evolution? It depends on what one means by the word "evolution." If one simply means "change over time," or even that living things are related by common ancestry, then there is no inherent conflict between evolutionary theory and intelligent design theory. However, the dominant theory of evolution today is neo-Darwinism, which contends that evolution is driven by natural selection acting on random mutations, an unpredictable and purposeless process that "has no discernable direction or goal, including survival of a species." (NABT Statement on Teaching Evolution). It is this specific claim made by neo-Darwinism that intelligent design theory directly challenges.
This assumes 'evolution' to represent natural selection as a random force. ID here admits to the methodology of evolution in the second sentence but omits random natural selection as the guiding force. This is indistinguishable from guided evolution.
Is intelligent design theory the same as creationism? No. Intelligent design theory is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the "apparent design" in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism is focused on defending a literal reading of the Genesis account, usually including the creation of the earth by the Biblical God a few thousand years ago.
This assumes 'creationism' to refer to young earth creationism only.
Going back to the wiki article you draw your 'knowledge' from:
Intelligent design was developed by a group of American creationists who revised their argument in the creation–evolution controversy to circumvent court rulings such as the United States Supreme Court Edwards v. Aguillard ruling, which barred the teaching of "creation science" in public schools as breaching the separation of church and state.
You see ID is a smokescreen made for tactical legal reasons in the US, just as I claimed.
It is a form of creationism but denies it is such by claiming that only young earth creationism is creationism as an internal definition. This did not work on the US courts who considered ID as to be creationism by legal definition.
Quote from wiki on Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case.
The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy thus violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The judge's decision has sparked considerable response from both supporters and critics.
Guided evolution and intelligent design are one and the same thing. Guided evolution is honestly packaged creationist opinion attached to the science of evolution, this is also called neo-creationism, old earth creationism, day-age creationism and other names.
Intelligent design is just a rebranding for tactical legal reasons, which failed because the courts successfully identified ID as creationism. The science behind ID is effectively identical to evolution except in the catalyst of change being divine rather than stochastic, the same as guided evolution, just without the politics.
sebster wrote:
You are assuming a neutral setting which is not possible, so atheism is allowed to be attached to the message under the guise that 'atheism is not religion', while a right of response is often prohibited. This is the issue.
This only exists if you think there is some atheist agenda put forward in science class in the first place. Teaching kids that animals evolved from simple organisms to complex ones over millions of years is not teaching kids atheism.
Your logic is skewed. The two can appear in seperation, hence the consistent use of the word hijacking. Science has been on the curriculum for a long time, adding evolution to science teaching is logical. Atheists can then comes along to hijack it when in place as a platform to 'prove' there is no God. Normally by misadvocating creationism as young earth creationism only and thus 'disproving' the Bible.
sebster wrote:
So they're not taking over, they're just getting to say their bit (even though their bit isn't mentioned at all) without the other side getting to explain their's... is that your point?
Nope. The point is that by hijacking evolution atheism can be claimed to be science rather than religion, this is also backed up by the dogma that as atheism has no beleif in the divine it cannot be a religion. This gives atheism a tactic to gain foothold in fora where religion itself is not permitted. In terms of education allowing evolution to be taught without the caveat that evolution makes no comment on the existance or non existance of the divine gives ammo for atheists without opportunity to reply.
In communist countries this is exactly what happens, formally. In the US the opposite was initially in place with evoltion being banned from the classroom in 15 states. This was stopped, and eventually reversed because the methodology used to remove ther previous imbalance was to 'remove religion from the classrooms' under the Establishment Clause. It was only later understood that atheism is a form of religion as an of itself, due to the clouded theological definition of atheism a loophole emerges which allows atheism to attach itself to evolution while firmly preventing any counter message in th same fora.
The solution is not creationism in sceince school, a wide mulit-point theology teaching in schools is recommended for for different reasons , mostly do do with dispelling prejudice via familiarity. All that is required in evolutionary class is the inclusion of the caveat that evolution is not a theological topic and makes no claim either for or against any religious ideology, or similar wording.
Alternately atheism can be formally identified as a religious group in terms of its legal standing in schools. Either will do, though the former is less prone to abuse.
All that is occuring on this subject in the US schools system is due to tactical legal and political posturing, on both sides. This needs to be neutralised, fairly and evenly so that science is taught with a genuine level permit, and be seen to do so.
sebster wrote:
They're a lot quieter because there are so very few of them. There are so very few because by and large the church in the UK is more progressive, more committed to social causes and less to promoting religious dogma. Which in turns causes there to be less young earthers, which in turn makes them that much quieter, which means the church remains moderate, and around and around we go.
If only that were so.
sebster wrote:
If you mean jackhole atheists like the Dawkins fanclub need to stop being jackholes, then I agree, but feel the need to point out that despite all their noise and bluster these people remain entirely irrelevant to the political process. They're annoying, but they're not relevant.
Dawkins is an alarmist, but then he has probably seen a wolf. I have sympathy for him, he is on the receiving end of a lot of flak by fanatics who wont let go and so its not truly his fault that he is becoming battle worn. Though he is growing a very perceptible contempt for the religious man which doesn't help him with dealing with those who would like to listen to his opinions from across the room.
sebster wrote:
But even still, how can one be an atheist fundamentalist. 'I don't believe there's a God' really doesn't have any fundamental or non-fundamental components.
Your still overanalylsing this. For example I could be rightfully considered a 'gay Christian', I am not homosexual but a genuinely happy man, most of the time. I don't consider it wise to call myself a gay Christian because the meaning of the word gay has changed, especially in that context, though I might use the word gay in its original form in poetry. I consider myself religious though by definition religion means following the trappings of a faith group rather than to be of faith. In some churches, notably evangelical ones, being called 'religious' is a negative critique of ones spiritual walk and potentially an insult. I think that we need to use the common vernacular and so have no problems being called religious or admitting to being religious.
Fundamental-ism/-ist is a word that has changed, don't concern yourself overly that it doesn't fully make sense, plenty of words used to mean something else.
Crom wrote:
In the world of physics there is only one reality.
Yes, and in the world of physics "universe" does not mean the same thing it does in colloquial parlance. From that perspective "universe" references a body of space-time possessed of a homogeneous set of physical laws. There can, theoretically, exist more than one of these provided that they are themselves connected by a few discreet, principle objects.
Crom wrote:
Now in philosophy, like chan buddhism, and everything is just an illusion and nothing is as it seems is nothing near science.
No, that's also wrong. The idea that everything that we perceive is illusory is at the core of many scientific disciplines. In fact, it could be argued that's what the scientific method itself is about.
Crom wrote:
All scientific documentation and papers referring to multiple realities, or parallel universes is quite a stretch of the imagination using known frameworks as a basis to prove, that it is possible. However, that is the extent of where you can get with that. We know gravity exists, it is now scientific law. We have laws of thermodynamics and they have not yet been broken. These things can be simulated and proven to exist. Mutliple universes cannot.
No, it can't, but neither can a single universe. We can prove that this universe exists, and therefore that there must be at least one universe, but we cannot prove that there is only one universe.
Crom wrote:
The idea that there is only one universe is all we got to go on for now, and that is what I am going to stick with. You can hardly parallel believing in 1 universe is just as science fiction as believing in multiple. I already know the universe I live in exists.
You've argued two different things there. There is a distinction between believing in the existence of one thing, and believing in the existence of only one thing. For example, I might believe in the existence of one man and be though rational, but if I said that I believed in the existence of only one man I would be thought mad.
OK, well this is going off topic and I admit theoretical physics is not my forte, but where exactly are you getting all this stuff? From my understanding, albeit limited, is that the whole concept of multiple realities and parallel universes is completely theoretical with no empirical evidence supporting such claims.
I mean I like the idea and recently became of fan of the new Dr Who series, but that is all science fiction.
BaronIveagh wrote:
Crom wrote:
In the world of physics there is only one reality.
In the world of Quantum physics there are quite a few more. I refer you to the many worlds interpretation, where not every reality even follows the same rules, depending on what order various things took place in the infinity small space of time following the big bang.
As far as proofs go, mathematically they exist. Actual physical evidence has not been gathered, per se, but it's real science not just science fiction.
Like the TV show Fringe... some people seriously consider this a reality... those people watch too much TV
In the world of physics there is only one reality.
In the world of Quantum physics there are quite a few more. I refer you to the many worlds interpretation, where not every reality even follows the same rules, depending on what order various things took place in the infinity small space of time following the big bang.
As far as proofs go, mathematically they exist. Actual physical evidence has not been gathered, per se, but it's real science not just science fiction.
I can use proofs to mathematically prove tons of stuff, that doesn't mean it actually exists. I have purchased some advanced physics books and they are on my shelf. Some Hawkings stuff, some Brian Greene, I sometimes lurk at bad astrology forums, etc. I have a very basic general knowledge of such things but nothing that deep. I just cannot seem to pry myself from science fiction, fiction, and technical manuals to jump into advanced physics books. I also have a small extensive religious text collection as well.
I am trying to teach myself too many work related things at once right now to have any extensive pleasure reading time and since my job requires zero knowledge of physics that is not a high priority at the moment. Though one of these days I am going to sit down and read them all.
Orlanth wrote:Look around you, how many times to you see evolution placed as atheistic doctrine. It even happens here, repeatedly, its a common meme.
Atheism also gets attached to National Socialism. There are all kinds of ridiculous because people in general have poorly considered political views.
But people believing silly things doesn't make them true.
Are you trying to tell me you cant find evidence of an attempt to generate a connection between atheist claims in the non-existance of God and evolution? Look harder, in fact look at all.
If it were once or twice, but its a major propaganda theme.
Since you obviously have this evidence, why don't you publish it?
In the world of physics there is only one reality.
In the world of Quantum physics there are quite a few more. I refer you to the many worlds interpretation, where not every reality even follows the same rules, depending on what order various things took place in the infinity small space of time following the big bang.
As far as proofs go, mathematically they exist. Actual physical evidence has not been gathered, per se, but it's real science not just science fiction.
I can use proofs to mathematically prove tons of stuff, that doesn't mean it actually exists. I have purchased some advanced physics books and they are on my shelf. Some Hawkings stuff, some Brian Greene, I sometimes lurk at bad astrology forums, etc. I have a very basic general knowledge of such things but nothing that deep. I just cannot seem to pry myself from science fiction, fiction, and technical manuals to jump into advanced physics books. I also have a small extensive religious text collection as well.
I am trying to teach myself too many work related things at once right now to have any extensive pleasure reading time and since my job requires zero knowledge of physics that is not a high priority at the moment. Though one of these days I am going to sit down and read them all.
Meh advanced physics books are over rated to be honest, they are good for thought provoking reading but once you grasp the concepts you can move right on to the higher level papers.
corpsesarefun wrote:
Meh advanced physics books are over rated to be honest, they are good for thought provoking reading but once you grasp the concepts you can move right on to the higher level papers.
Which is why I am teaching myself python and ruby at the moment. Those actually apply to my job. I am also thinking about going back to school since I am one of those works in IT people with no IT degree and I think I have capped off at my current job level. Which by no means is a bad thing, but I feel I could accomplish more. going back to school and getting it done will be a good test. Then I will just have two degrees and only one will be worthless, hopefully, LOL....
*now back on topic*
Evolution is done over millions of years, and we are finding more and more that we share a certain level of common ground in our DNA as with everything else in the planet. Sometimes a it is only a mere 5% similarity, all the way up to primates which is like what, 96%? 99%? One can draw a conclusion that we all stem from the same source, but evolution has taken us down different paths. Sometimes a complete opposite path. The more we find out in science proves that a lot of single cell organisms already carry the building blocks that multiple cell organism have and use.
I mean look at the whale. A complex water living mammal, that shares some traits with us (since we are also mammals) and what we are just now discovering about them is that they may have once been land roaming mammals many many years ago.
I heartily recommend going back to university as a mature student.
You have a much more sensible perspective on things. Despite the extra work on top of normal life, it is entirely possible to take a degree in four years in evening classes.
I can use proofs to mathematically prove tons of stuff, that doesn't mean it actually exists. I have purchased some advanced physics books and they are on my shelf. Some Hawkings stuff, some Brian Greene, I sometimes lurk at bad astrology forums, etc. I have a very basic general knowledge of such things but nothing that deep. I just cannot seem to pry myself from science fiction, fiction, and technical manuals to jump into advanced physics books. I also have a small extensive religious text collection as well.
I am trying to teach myself too many work related things at once right now to have any extensive pleasure reading time and since my job requires zero knowledge of physics that is not a high priority at the moment. Though one of these days I am going to sit down and read them all.
Basically it's a solution to the Schroedinger's Cat box paradox.
See, once the cat goes into the box, it enters a state of quantum indeterminacy. Since it's actually impossible for a cat to be both alive and dead, there has to be some way around this.
Kilkrazy wrote:I heartily recommend going back to university as a mature student.
You have a much more sensible perspective on things. Despite the extra work on top of normal life, it is entirely possible to take a degree in four years in evening classes.
Yeah long story short, I almost had a job at Google. Got past the 2nd and 3rd interviews. Didn't quite make it to the fourth. Learned that most people don't make it past interview 1 or 2. I have no college degree in what I do and am completely self taught, minus a few training courses (certification boot camps) my employers have paid for. My problem is now finding a college that really teaches what I want to dive into (open source management, development, Unix based OSes, etc) and will allow me to test out of every class I could teach. Sadly they all seem Windows centric, and to be honest, I taught myself Active Directory in about a month with a book, and it wasn't hard. I taught myself how to code in bash, python and perl, and well I don't find that all too hard either.
I think I actually may want to get into IT development since I have 12 years of IT experience now. I think I know what IT professionals need tool wise. I think I want to do it in open source too, but just not really sure what to take. I need to email some deans and figure out how many credits transfer from old college, what I can test out of it, and what course I can take that will teach me what I am looking for and still get me a degree. I just find the Windows server side stuff so easy that I feel like I am wasting my money paying for college for it. Now the Unix and Linux stuff I can see paying for, because I know it, and I have been doing it professionally, but I have no book knowledge and I do think it is a bit more complex. I would like to have that book knowledge and maybe add a few more languages to my resumé (or CV as you Europeans call it) in the process. I would love to learn C, Ojb C, and ruby, which are 3 languages I do not know that well at all.
All of this makes me think if I applied myself more I could accomplish more, and the going back to school is really just a test to see if I can do it. It is not like my current job will fire me for going back to school and I don't plan on quitting while going back to school. Plus by the time I graduate like 15 years experience and a degree isn't too shabby. Some of my work experience is maybe semi-impressive to some.
You should probably look at project management, organisational psychology, human interface design and system architecture rather than just another language or shell script system.
I don't know about the US, but in the UK you can take a degree over evening classes and it takes three nights a week plus time at the weekend for reading and writing.
Kilkrazy wrote:You should probably look at project management, organisational psychology, human interface design and system architecture rather than just another language or shell script system.
I don't know about the US, but in the UK you can take a degree over evening classes and it takes three nights a week plus time at the weekend for reading and writing.
Yeah not sure if I am really into management of people. I have grown quite fond of managing machines. They don't talk back and generally do whatever it is I tell them to do
Yeah they have night degree programs here as well, from all over and from many schools. In fact my friend's sister lives in Las Vegas, and works in the medical field and is going back to get her Masters (grad school) and doing it remotely. Her Grad school is in Missouri and she lives in Nevada. All classes are online but she is required to fly in for finals.
I like problem solving and writing my own code and running machines a lot. I am not sure how I would fare as a project manager with people under me. Everything is negotiable though. I do feel that a lot of developers that write software tools for IT professionals are software developers first and IT/support professionals second. If that makes any sense. I also find all academia software products to be sub par and total crap. If I ever went software developer I would redesign the old and busted monolithic design of academic software and make so the end user actually likes using those sorts of products and the IT staff actually likes supporting them. I love it when someone comes to me with a problem and says this probably cannot be done but can you look at it? Then with a few days I usually have a work around to make it work. Sometimes the work around is absolutely ridiculous, but it works. In some cases I have to say not possible, but give good explanation why.
Kilkrazy wrote:You'll find that people management always comes in at some point, even if it is managing upwards rather than downwards.
Also, project managers often don't have people under them, they just have responsibility for things.
My last job our project manager was just a micro manager, that is all he did. At my job before that our project manager was more an operations guy than anything, and my current job, we don't have any project managers. Though, to be honest sometimes I really wish we did have one to organize how we execute our large projects. Like rolling out 6,000 new machines in a life cycle exchange, or upgrading new servers every so often. Right now we just play it by ear....and it works, but at times I feel it is not as efficient as it could be.
To me project manager just seems like middle management and has pretty much been middle management at my previous jobs. I assume your mileage will vary from company to company though.
Kilkrazy wrote:I heartily recommend going back to university as a mature student.
You have a much more sensible perspective on things. Despite the extra work on top of normal life, it is entirely possible to take a degree in four years in evening classes.
Yeah long story short, I almost had a job at Google. Got past the 2nd and 3rd interviews. Didn't quite make it to the fourth. Learned that most people don't make it past interview 1 or 2. I have no college degree in what I do and am completely self taught, minus a few training courses (certification boot camps) my employers have paid for. My problem is now finding a college that really teaches what I want to dive into (open source management, development, Unix based OSes, etc) and will allow me to test out of every class I could teach. Sadly they all seem Windows centric, and to be honest, I taught myself Active Directory in about a month with a book, and it wasn't hard. I taught myself how to code in bash, python and perl, and well I don't find that all too hard either.
I think I actually may want to get into IT development since I have 12 years of IT experience now. I think I know what IT professionals need tool wise. I think I want to do it in open source too, but just not really sure what to take. I need to email some deans and figure out how many credits transfer from old college, what I can test out of it, and what course I can take that will teach me what I am looking for and still get me a degree. I just find the Windows server side stuff so easy that I feel like I am wasting my money paying for college for it. Now the Unix and Linux stuff I can see paying for, because I know it, and I have been doing it professionally, but I have no book knowledge and I do think it is a bit more complex. I would like to have that book knowledge and maybe add a few more languages to my resumé (or CV as you Europeans call it) in the process. I would love to learn C, Ojb C, and ruby, which are 3 languages I do not know that well at all.
All of this makes me think if I applied myself more I could accomplish more, and the going back to school is really just a test to see if I can do it. It is not like my current job will fire me for going back to school and I don't plan on quitting while going back to school. Plus by the time I graduate like 15 years experience and a degree isn't too shabby. Some of my work experience is maybe semi-impressive to some.
Lehigh Univiersity while i was there in comp sci was Unix Based.... Just saying. But anyways, back on topic?
Crom wrote:
OK, well this is going off topic and I admit theoretical physics is not my forte, but where exactly are you getting all this stuff? From my understanding, albeit limited, is that the whole concept of multiple realities and parallel universes is completely theoretical with no empirical evidence supporting such claims.
Oh, absolutely, I'm merely stating that anything that goes beyond claiming that the observed universe must exist is a matter of theory; including any claim that entails the existence of only one universe. Its a minor issue of logic, but its important when you start getting into abstract concepts.
Either way, I'm not in my depth either. My knowledge of physics doesn't extend beyond the using of some of the more interesting modeling techniques in politics.
Orlanth wrote:Are you trying to tell me you cant find evidence of an attempt to generate a connection between atheist claims in the non-existance of God and evolution? Look harder, in fact look at all.
If it were once or twice, but its a major propaganda theme.
What? Your response doesn't make sense to what I said? I acknowledged that atheists try to claim evolution as some kind of proof, and that they're wrong.
This is heavily quoted by wikipedia wghich appears to be where you are drawing your info from..
You're not actually reading my posts, are you? I mean, I pointed out explicitly that I was taking my definitions from wiki; "Here's wiki to explain it to you". And then you mention that I appear to be getting my info from wiki...
Honestly, are you reading what I'm saying, because I've kind of suspected that you've basically been skimming to get the jist of my point and then responded to that, instead of actually trying to understand what I've been explaining to you. It's really the only possible explanation for what's going on here, because what I've explained isn't complicated, nor is particularly debatable, yet here we are...
This assumes 'evolution' to represent natural selection as a random force. ID here admits to the methodology of evolution in the second sentence but omits random natural selection as the guiding force. This is indistinguishable from guided evolution.
The massive difference between the two is that guided evolution takes the presence of that guiding hand as a matter of faith, intelligent design attempts to prove it, and uses really awful science to do so.
Two people can believe God created the Earth. The one that goes out to find Noah's ark to prove it is very different.
Is intelligent design theory the same as creationism? No. Intelligent design theory is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the "apparent design" in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism is focused on defending a literal reading of the Genesis account, usually including the creation of the earth by the Biblical God a few thousand years ago.
This assumes 'creationism' to refer to young earth creationism only.
And that quote is, of course, their effort to distance creationism from intelligent design. Something I pointed out to you days ago has been emphatically rejected in a court of law as being grossly disingenuous.
Going back to the wiki article you draw your 'knowledge' from:
Wow. You really should have read my post properly before you decided on that woeful line of attack.
You see ID is a smokescreen made for tactical legal reasons in the US, just as I claimed.
I've been trying to explain that to you... you really haven't been reading anything I've written, have you?
The point being that it is a tactical smokescreen for a particular kind of creationism, the type that believes there is scientific basis for rejecting evolution, the type that attempts to create its own dodgy science to prove its own claims.
This is entirely different to a belief that God set all the processes in play knowing they'd end up as they have.
It is a form of creationism but denies it is such by claiming that only young earth creationism is creationism as an internal definition. This did not work on the US courts who considered ID as to be creationism by legal definition.
Quote from wiki on Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case.
The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy thus violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The judge's decision has sparked considerable response from both supporters and critics.
Why are you repeating this stuff? This is stuff I was explaining to you days ago.
Your logic is skewed. The two can appear in seperation, hence the consistent use of the word hijacking. Science has been on the curriculum for a long time, adding evolution to science teaching is logical. Atheists can then comes along to hijack it when in place as a platform to 'prove' there is no God. Normally by misadvocating creationism as young earth creationism only and thus 'disproving' the Bible.
But that isn't happening. No atheists are walking into science classes and arguing what should be taught. No atheists are working into school boards to get science textbooks misrepresenting all creationsm and young earth creationism. That's all just stuff you're making up.
Meanwhile there are actual intelligent design advocates on school boards lobbying to 'teach the controversy'.
Nope. The point is that by hijacking evolution atheism can be claimed to be science rather than religion, this is also backed up by the dogma that as atheism has no beleif in the divine it cannot be a religion. This gives atheism a tactic to gain foothold in fora where religion itself is not permitted. In terms of education allowing evolution to be taught without the caveat that evolution makes no comment on the existance or non existance of the divine gives ammo for atheists without opportunity to reply.
Well, atheism isn't a religion. It's certainly a belief, a faith if you will, but it isn't a religion. In the same way that 'I believe in God' isn't a religion, because a religion is so much more than that, in the way that Islam and Christianity are different religions despite both believing in God.
And yes, atheism can try to claim some kind of rational basis. In the same way that religion tries to claim some kind of dominance over morality. They're both utterly wrong.
But that's just what goes on in debates, and they're a free-for-all of groundless opinion. What we're actually talking is what gets taught in science class. And no-one in science class is using evolution to say there is no God and so your claim is entirely baseless.
In communist countries this is exactly what happens, formally. In the US the opposite was initially in place with evoltion being banned from the classroom in 15 states. This was stopped, and eventually reversed because the methodology used to remove ther previous imbalance was to 'remove religion from the classrooms' under the Establishment Clause. It was only later understood that atheism is a form of religion as an of itself, due to the clouded theological definition of atheism a loophole emerges which allows atheism to attach itself to evolution while firmly preventing any counter message in th same fora.
Atheism was never taught in US science classes. You keep insisting on this and it is nonsense.
The solution is not creationism in sceince school, a wide mulit-point theology teaching in schools is recommended for for different reasons , mostly do do with dispelling prejudice via familiarity. All that is required in evolutionary class is the inclusion of the caveat that evolution is not a theological topic and makes no claim either for or against any religious ideology, or similar wording.
So, you mean like I said to you four days ago "At most, because of the invented contraversy, a science teacher should explain that evolution is a study of the natural processes by which animals evolve over time, and that it doesn't in any way address spiritual questions of any nature, and that an understanding of evolution is in no way opposed to religious belief."
It's becoming obvious that if only you'd bothered to read my posts this whole thing wouldn't have been necessary. Well, and if you'd thought a bit more about the 'atheism is getting taught in science class' silliness.
All that is occuring on this subject in the US schools system is due to tactical legal and political posturing, on both sides. This needs to be neutralised, fairly and evenly so that science is taught with a genuine level permit, and be seen to do so.
Who are these atheists doing this posturing? There are two sides in this issue, one side trying to get science classes to 'teach the controversy' by including intelligent design nonsense, and the other side is trying to keep science class teaching actual science.
That's the debate. Those grounds are widely recognised by both sides. Your imagination is impressive but your description of the political conflict is horrible.
Dawkins is an alarmist, but then he has probably seen a wolf. I have sympathy for him, he is on the receiving end of a lot of flak by fanatics who wont let go and so its not truly his fault that he is becoming battle worn. Though he is growing a very perceptible contempt for the religious man which doesn't help him with dealing with those who would like to listen to his opinions from across the room.
Dawkins spends his time attacking religion by picking on it's most intellectually limited believers. Going to some backwater town in Arkansas and making fun of the beliefs of some locals isn't the result of being battle worn, it's because Dawkins likes feeling superior to religious people. Any well educated religious person could just as easily go and find some idiot atheist and make fun of him, and it'd be just as useful.
What actually needs to be done is for consideration and humility to be increased on all sides. Dawkins' approach is the opposite of that. If he actually wanted to use his (impressively high) intellect to encourage debate on this issue, then he should accept some of the debates that have been offered by intellectuals of various faiths, and engage with them in respectful but vigourous debate.
But he doesn't...
Your still overanalylsing this. For example I could be rightfully considered a 'gay Christian', I am not homosexual but a genuinely happy man, most of the time. I don't consider it wise to call myself a gay Christian because the meaning of the word gay has changed, especially in that context, though I might use the word gay in its original form in poetry. I consider myself religious though by definition religion means following the trappings of a faith group rather than to be of faith. In some churches, notably evangelical ones, being called 'religious' is a negative critique of ones spiritual walk and potentially an insult. I think that we need to use the common vernacular and so have no problems being called religious or admitting to being religious.
Fundamental-ism/-ist is a word that has changed, don't concern yourself overly that it doesn't fully make sense, plenty of words used to mean something else.
But fundamentalist hasn't completely changed. It is still frequently used to refer to a movement returning to or focusing on the fundamentals of their faith. At the same time there are scores of words used to mean what the earlier poster most likely meant, 'militant atheist' is common, as is 'fanatical atheist'. If he had meant something like this he simply could have explained that was his intent and changed his meaning.
That's kind of how debate is supposed to work, where a term produced a muddled or unclear definition, you discuss it and come to a clearer understanding of the concept they wish to discuss.
Instead of being 'overthinking' it's exactly how debate is supposed to work.
Horizon: Are We Still Evolving? will be on BBC Two at 2100 on Tuesday 1 March 2011 and afterwards on BBC iPlayer
go go go sky plus/equivalent !
Our appendix has been gradually reducing in size over the generations so I doubt that we are not evolving. What we need to do is get science in there to speed up the process - splice in some more primate DNA to give us hand-feet, then add in some cat DNA for night vision, some dog DNA for super smell, and some Einstein DNA so that we can finally set the timer on the damn VCR!
"Teach the controversy" is a phrase that annoys. The science of evolution is not a controversial matter in any real sense, it's virtually universally accepted by scientific standards. That a few scientifically illiterate/dishonest creationists make a disproportionate amount of noise does not make for a real controversy worth teaching any more than the shape of the planet would be controversial if the flat earth people started getting out of hand.
House Bill 195, introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives on January 13, 2011, and not yet referred to a committee, is apparently the second antievolution bill of 2011. The bill would, if enacted, call on state and local education administrators to "endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution" and to "endeavor to assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies." "Toward this end," the bill continues, "teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution."
HB 195 is virtually identical to HB 1651, introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives on January 13, 2010. The main difference is that HB 1651's ornate disclaimer — "this section shall not be construed to promote philosophical naturalism or biblical theology, promote natural cause or intelligent cause, promote undirected change or purposeful design, promote atheistic or theistic belief, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs or ideas, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion" — was replaced in HB 195 with "this section shall not be construed to promote any religious or nonreligious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs or nonbeliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion." When the Missouri legislative session ended on May 14, 2010, HB 1651 died without ever having been assigned to a committee.
The chief sponsor of HB 195 is Andrew Koenig (R-District 88), joined by Doug Funderburk (R-District 12), Kurt Bahr (R-District 19), Charlie Davis (R-District 128), Bill Reiboldt (R-District 130), Thomas Long (R-District 134), Dwight Scharnhorst (R-District 93), Shane Schoelle (R-District 139), Kathie Conway (R-District 14), Chuck Gatschenberger (R-District 13), Darrell Pollock (R-District 146), Rick Stream (R-District 94), Rodney Schad (R-District 115), and David Sater (R-District 68). Funderburk, Davis, Sater, Stream, Schad, and Pollock were also cosponsors of HB 1651 in 2010. HB 1651's chief sponsor Robert Wayne Cooper (R-District 155), who previously introduced a string of unsuccessful antievolution bills — HB 911 and 1722 (which called for equal time for "intelligent design" in the state's public schools) in 2004, HB 1266 in 2006, HB 2554 in 2008, and HB 656 in 2009 — in Missouri, was termed out of office in 2010.
Not only atheists, but constitutionalists and scientists will be annoyed. So should tax payers.
This bill will waste a lot of time and money if it goes forwards, and will eventually be struck down as unconstitutional if it gecomes law.
It won't. Who cares? There are bills introduced every year calling for the disbanding of the Union and the Federal Reserve, and making the official language Swedish. no one gives a gak.
Horizon: Are We Still Evolving? will be on BBC Two at 2100 on Tuesday 1 March 2011 and afterwards on BBC iPlayer
go go go sky plus/equivalent !
Our appendix has been gradually reducing in size over the generations so I doubt that we are not evolving. What we need to do is get science in there to speed up the process - splice in some more primate DNA to give us hand-feet, then add in some cat DNA for night vision, some dog DNA for super smell, and some Einstein DNA so that we can finally set the timer on the damn VCR!
People have also been documented with no longer growing wisdom teeth. Back before modern medicine your teeth were just horrible. Wisdom teeth came in later in life to push out rotten old teeth to replace them with more newer teeth. We are evolving to no longer need them.
Like the TV show Fringe... some people seriously consider this a reality... those people watch too much TV
Oh my favorite is technology on TV and movies that people think is real. CSI crime labs are 100% fictitious and 100% hilarious.
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Frazzled wrote:It won't. Who cares? There are bills introduced every year calling for the disbanding of the Union and the Federal Reserve, and making the official language Swedish. no one gives a gak.
Uh it passed in Kansas, and now schools have the option of teaching it. Remember the whole flying spaghetti monster? yeah, that started because of the KS state school board.
Horizon: Are We Still Evolving? will be on BBC Two at 2100 on Tuesday 1 March 2011 and afterwards on BBC iPlayer
go go go sky plus/equivalent !
Our appendix has been gradually reducing in size over the generations so I doubt that we are not evolving. What we need to do is get science in there to speed up the process - splice in some more primate DNA to give us hand-feet, then add in some cat DNA for night vision, some dog DNA for super smell, and some Einstein DNA so that we can finally set the timer on the damn VCR!
People have also been documented with no longer growing wisdom teeth. Back before modern medicine your teeth were just horrible. Wisdom teeth came in later in life to push out rotten old teeth to replace them with more newer teeth. We are evolving to no longer need them.
Like the TV show Fringe... some people seriously consider this a reality... those people watch too much TV
Oh my favorite is technology on TV and movies that people think is real. CSI crime labs are 100% fictitious and 100% hilarious.
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Frazzled wrote:It won't. Who cares? There are bills introduced every year calling for the disbanding of the Union and the Federal Reserve, and making the official language Swedish. no one gives a gak.
Uh it passed in Kansas, and now schools have the option of teaching it. Remember the whole flying spaghetti monster? yeah, that started because of the KS state school board.
The wisdom teeth issue however... is not evolution as we would expect it. Which I guess is the purpose behind the talk. Organisms don't change according to "disuse" of body parts.
Wisdom teeth were great! people who had them lived longer/healthier back in the day when dental care was poor. nowadays they are removed. they simply do not have an impact on us surviving and passing on our DNA... Its an interesting aside as to how our technology has impacted our evolution
The wisdom teeth issue however... is not evolution as we would expect it. Which I guess is the purpose behind the talk. Organisms don't change according to "disuse" of body parts.
Wisdom teeth were great! people who had them lived longer/healthier back in the day when dental care was poor. nowadays they are removed. they simply do not have an impact on us surviving and passing on our DNA... Its an interesting aside as to how our technology has impacted our evolution
I think that is debatable, there are cases of animals changing so much over so many years that they in fact have changed to not using a part of their body. Look at the whale and the video I posted a few pages back on it.
The wisdom teeth issue however... is not evolution as we would expect it. Which I guess is the purpose behind the talk. Organisms don't change according to "disuse" of body parts.
Wisdom teeth were great! people who had them lived longer/healthier back in the day when dental care was poor. nowadays they are removed. they simply do not have an impact on us surviving and passing on our DNA... Its an interesting aside as to how our technology has impacted our evolution
I think that is debatable, there are cases of animals changing so much over so many years that they in fact have changed to not using a part of their body. Look at the whale and the video I posted a few pages back on it.
I'm going to disagree... simply the fact that the whales that stayed in the water more survived better and had more offspring is why they are the way they are today, we'd need to do more research to determine why they survived better, but still
An example is if you cut of mice tails each new generation of mice born will still have tails... the genetics are there. This was actually a historical test done when forming our understanding of evolution as we know it. (found the name of the theory which was changed upon further understanding of genetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism )
Simply not using a body part doesn't remove it from your genetics.
frgsinwntr wrote:Simply not using a body part doesn't remove it from your genetics.
Obviously not in itself, but having an unneeded body part is cumbersome and a waste of resources so over long periods of time they will become vestigial as it's more advantageous not to have them, thus selection tends towards animals with smaller expression of these unneeded parts.
Some traits or mutations are almost selectively neutral. Possessing them is of so little benefit or hindrance that they tend to be passed on from one generation to the next because selection for or against the trait is so weak, they just hang around. In this case the frequency of a trait or mutation can change or be lost altogether through genetic drift, which is just the overall frequency of a mutation in a population changing by random chance rather than due to some selective pressure.
frgsinwntr wrote:Simply not using a body part doesn't remove it from your genetics.
Obviously not in itself, but having an unneeded body part is cumbersome and a waste of resources so over long periods of time they will become vestigial as it's more advantageous not to have them, thus selection tends towards animals with smaller expression of these unneeded parts.
Some traits or mutations are almost selectively neutral. Possessing them is of so little benefit or hindrance that they tend to be passed on from one generation to the next because selection for or against the trait is so weak, they just hang around. In this case the frequency of a trait or mutation can change or be lost altogether through genetic drift, which is just the overall frequency of a mutation in a population changing by random chance rather than due to some selective pressure.
The wisdom teeth issue however... is not evolution as we would expect it. Which I guess is the purpose behind the talk. Organisms don't change according to "disuse" of body parts.
Wisdom teeth were great! people who had them lived longer/healthier back in the day when dental care was poor. nowadays they are removed. they simply do not have an impact on us surviving and passing on our DNA... Its an interesting aside as to how our technology has impacted our evolution
I think that is debatable, there are cases of animals changing so much over so many years that they in fact have changed to not using a part of their body. Look at the whale and the video I posted a few pages back on it.
I'm going to disagree... simply the fact that the whales that stayed in the water more survived better and had more offspring is why they are the way they are today, we'd need to do more research to determine why they survived better, but still
An example is if you cut of mice tails each new generation of mice born will still have tails... the genetics are there. This was actually a historical test done when forming our understanding of evolution as we know it. (found the name of the theory which was changed upon further understanding of genetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism )
Simply not using a body part doesn't remove it from your genetics.
That is cool, we can disagree. I was using the whale as a reference because they found hip joint and leg bones for rear legs for them. Now, we are talking a really long time, probably 100s of millions of years. It is estimated that the wolf-like dog creature that eventually turned into different form of mammal sea life, like whales, started hunting in waters because it was an unchecked natural resource of food. There were no other predators, so they became instant top of the food chain. Over the many different fossils they have found, they discovered common bones in each species. They also see that the nostrils moved, from the front of the face to the top of the head for more efficient breathing while under water.
Of course you are correct, this is all theory, but it has a lot of evidence supporting it's claim. Unfortunately, natural selection usually takes over when species are inefficient so the whale could be a very isolated case, or an exception to the rule. I also know that mutation is not really evolution either and can be passed down through genes.
Crom wrote:That is cool, we can disagree. I was using the whale as a reference because they found hip joint and leg bones for rear legs for them. Now, we are talking a really long time, probably 100s of millions of years.
Well probably a good bit less than that, mammals didn't really become prominent until after the dinosaurs which is ~65million years ago. Mammals are descended from the earliest creatures to leave the water, as are birds and dinosaurs. Some then returned to live in the water like dolphins and whales and have vestigial parts like hip bones. Almost all organisms have five digits at the ends of their limbs though, lizards, birds and mammals because all are descended from a common ancestor with the pentadactyl limb. Other creatures did exist with 6 or 7 digits but these did not prove as advantageous.
Of course you are correct, this is all theory, but it has a lot of evidence supporting it's claim. Unfortunately, natural selection usually takes over when species are inefficient so the whale could be a very isolated case, or an exception to the rule. I also know that mutation is not really evolution either and can be passed down through genes.
Dont' really understand this, natural selection is operating all the time which is why most organisms change gradually but continuously over time. Environments and conditions are always changing afterall. There are examples of organisms that have remained unchanged for millions of years usually described as 'living fossils' but they are in the minority. So you seem to have misconstrued how natural selection operates in evolution.
How is "mutation not really evolution"? Mutation is the very basis for new and novel traits to be formed that may then become fixed and widspread in a population over time through natural selection and ultimately physically evolve the species.
That's the kind of crap that should infuriate anyone who thinks science is important. Which should be everyone, but unfortunately a lot of folk just don't get that science is important.
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Crom wrote:People have also been documented with no longer growing wisdom teeth. Back before modern medicine your teeth were just horrible. Wisdom teeth came in later in life to push out rotten old teeth to replace them with more newer teeth. We are evolving to no longer need them.
For this to really work you'd need to explain how wisdom teeth are prevent people from having children. That is, you'd have to explain how they're causing people to die before they reach the average age people have kids, or they make the person less capable of having kids.
I've got doubts there's enough evolutionary pressure on people that the gene for wisdom teeth would be diminishing.
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Crom wrote:That is cool, we can disagree. I was using the whale as a reference because they found hip joint and leg bones for rear legs for them. Now, we are talking a really long time, probably 100s of millions of years. It is estimated that the wolf-like dog creature that eventually turned into different form of mammal sea life, like whales, started hunting in waters because it was an unchecked natural resource of food.
Actually the creature was predicted to share a common ancestor with modern bears, as bears are often observed moving out into the water to fish. I believe Darwin himself speculated about this.
And then a few years back we actually found the hybrid species in a former sea bed in, iirc, Kazahkstan.
Of course you are correct, this is all theory, but it has a lot of evidence supporting it's claim. Unfortunately, natural selection usually takes over when species are inefficient so the whale could be a very isolated case, or an exception to the rule. I also know that mutation is not really evolution either and can be passed down through genes.
Natural selection is always going on in every species. Natural selection is the process by which the mutations that most aid creatures in a species from passing on its genes become dominant within the species.
SilverMK2 wrote:What we need to do is get science in there to speed up the process - splice in some more primate DNA to give us hand-feet, then add in some cat DNA for night vision, some dog DNA for super smell, and some Einstein DNA so that we can finally set the timer on the damn VCR!
Genetic engineering human beings is a really bad idea. First it will be little things, but then some neo-nazis start trying to create Aryan superman and pretty soon it's...
Not all mutations are a form of evolution, like the blue lobster for example. That is what I meant.
Evolution does not cause mutations and mutations do not cause evolution. Natural pressures on a species will favor those organisms with characteristics which aid them in that environment allowing them to pass on their genes, while those that are not favored die and don't pass on their genes. While mutations create new characteristics they themselves cannot cause the evolution of an organism
Not all mutations are a form of evolution, like the blue lobster for example. That is what I meant.
Mutations aren't a form of evolution because they are different things, mutation and evolution are different concepts but they are linked. Mutation happens all the time, it merely creates more variation on which natural selection can act.
Mutation is merely a way for DNA to randomly change at the molecular level and possibly generate a different effect. For instance, because the DNA sequence codes for specific proteins, any alteration in the DNA code can change the sequence of proteins produced. Which may or may not be a good thing because the new protein being made might be very useful, or the old protein no longer being made might have been essential. Mutations tend to be either affecting single DNA bases, where it either changes an individual DNA base or adds/loses one, or affecting whole sections of DNA by deleting, duplicating, flipping or moving it elsewhere in the genome.
Some mutations are beneficial, some are deleterious, and some have no effect. The point is that natural selection is always operating upon organisms within a population, and tends to select for those that are most able to survive and reproduce. Whether or not mutations are occurring is incidental to this, because the 'fittest' survive. Those surviving pass on their DNA to following generations... that may be because of, or in spite of, any mutations they carry. But these mutations become more commonplace as a result of their survival and reproduction. And cumulatively the surviving and selected mutations across many generations gradually change the physical characteristics of the organism.
Not all mutations are a form of evolution, like the blue lobster for example. That is what I meant.
Mutations aren't a form of evolution because they are different things, mutation and evolution are different concepts but they are linked. Mutation happens all the time, it merely creates more variation on which natural selection can act.
Mutation is merely a way for DNA to randomly change at the molecular level and possibly generate a different effect. For instance, because the DNA sequence codes for specific proteins, any alteration in the DNA code can change the sequence of proteins produced. Which may or may not be a good thing because the new protein being made might be very useful, or the old protein no longer being made might have been essential. Mutations tend to be either affecting single DNA bases, where it either changes an individual DNA base or adds/loses one, or affecting whole sections of DNA by deleting, duplicating, flipping or moving it elsewhere in the genome.
Some mutations are beneficial, some are deleterious, and some have no effect. The point is that natural selection is always operating upon organisms within a population, and tends to select for those that are most able to survive and reproduce. Whether or not mutations are occurring is incidental to this, because the 'fittest' survive. Those surviving pass on their DNA to following generations... that may be because of, or in spite of, any mutations they carry. But these mutations become more commonplace as a result of their survival and reproduction. And cumulatively the surviving and selected mutations across many generations gradually change the physical characteristics of the organism.
This is a good summation of it but what is most concerning to proponents of the selective mutation theory is that there are a number of cases in nature where spontaneous mutation could not have possibly occurred without direction of some description. Take bats for example, they have both evolved the ability to emit sonic pulses and the ability to hear and 'see' by mapping these pulses. For both mutations to have occurred at the same time is statistically improbable. Likewise, if one assumes the abilities evolved sequentially, then presumably there were generations of bats flying into walls because they could squeak yet not hear - again, a fairly improbable scenario.
The only conclusion you can draw from it is that both mutations can't really exist without the other; there is no generational benefit for doing so. Personally, I absolutely do not believe in God, creationism or any other form of directed or intended creation but I am at loss to explain things like the bat and the myriad of other examples that exist in nature; I don't think a suitable theory exists to encompass it all.
filbert wrote:The only conclusion you can draw from it is that both mutations can't really exist without the other; there is no generational benefit for doing so. Personally, I absolutely do not believe in God, creationism or any other form of directed or intended creation but I am at loss to explain things like the bat and the myriad of other examples that exist in nature; I don't think a suitable theory exists to encompass it all.
I'm not familiar with the situation in bats but for examples of this nature it's sometimes suggested that one arose first but served a different purpose and was adapted to suit the second feature. Things like sight and hearing are not the result of single mutations but many things accumulating because they are such complex organs, so there are a lot of intermediate stages between blindness and high quality sight. The original functions and those at the intermediate stages are different to those in the modern form. Originally the features each could have been dual function, meaning they are somewhat useful on their own and then gradually adapted towards complementing each other until the second function was not required. You wouldn't get a mutations granting them the dual ability to emit/receive sonic pulses at a high quality, it would have to be a gradual process.
It's rather an extension of the "what use is half an eye" argument. Well evolutionary speaking, a half evolved eye (by human standards) is quite useful, even if it only lets you tell the difference between light and dark it's much better than no eye at all. Even a small use of sonic reception has applications even if it is primitive and you are not at all reliant upon it. Only recently there was a blind boy on the TV who could 'see' objects by clicking his tongue at them and hearing the echo. So it's not an inconceivable by any means, certainly not enough to say that it could 'not have possibly occurred without direction of some description'
Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm not familiar with the situation in bats but for examples of this nature it's sometimes suggested that one arose first but served a different purpose and was adapted to suit the second feature. Things like sight and hearing are not the result of single mutations but many things accumulating because they are such complex organs, so there are a lot of intermediate stages between blindness and high quality sight. The original functions and those at the intermediate stages are different to those in the modern form. Originally the features each could have been dual function, meaning they are somewhat useful on their own and then gradually adapted towards complementing each other until the second function was not required. You wouldn't get a mutations granting them the dual ability to emit/receive sonic pulses at a high quality, it would have to be a gradual process.
It's rather an extension of the "what use is half an eye" argument. Well evolutionary speaking, a half evolved eye (by human standards) is quite useful, even if it only lets you tell the difference between light and dark it's much better than no eye at all. Even a small use of sonic reception has applications even if it is primitive and you are not at all reliant upon it. Only recently there was a blind boy on the TV who could 'see' objects by clicking his tongue at them and hearing the echo. So it's not an inconceivable by any means, certainly not enough to say that it could 'not have possibly occurred without direction of some description'
Yeah, good points. All I'm saying is I don't think it is as easy as saying that 'A evolved as a response to B and in conjunction with C'. I find it analogous to Einstein's search for a Unified Field Theory - I think there are still enough gaps in our science where holes appear in the various evolutionary theories. I feel Darwin et al started us on the right course but we haven't dug to the bottom of that particular hole enough to declare with certainty on the issue.
filbert wrote:Yeah, good points. All I'm saying is I don't think it is as easy as saying that 'A evolved as a response to B and in conjunction with C'.
Certainly not appropriate to say this especially over long stretches of evolutionary history, it too simplistic, especially when dealing with complex organs and combinations of multiple genes acting together. It could be compared to the study of actual history, one historical event does not merely lead to another in a long chain as a simple story leading up to the present, it's a hugely complex thing with many influences feeding in and out that shape events and history.
Evolutionary science is much bigger than what Darwin described, in this thread we've mainly concentrated on 'natural selection' but there are other important factors like 'sexual selection', also described by Darwin and which is responsible for the otherwise hopelessly impractical tails on peacocks and the like. I only mentioned Genetic Drift and there are things like epigenetics and selfish gene theory and more.
filbert wrote:
This is a good summation of it but what is most concerning to proponents of the selective mutation theory is that there are a number of cases in nature where spontaneous mutation could not have possibly occurred without direction of some description. Take bats for example, they have both evolved the ability to emit sonic pulses and the ability to hear and 'see' by mapping these pulses. For both mutations to have occurred at the same time is statistically improbable. Likewise, if one assumes the abilities evolved sequentially, then presumably there were generations of bats flying into walls because they could squeak yet not hear - again, a fairly improbable scenario.
Actually there are quite a few species of bat that emit high chirping calls but instead navigate by sight. Only one member of the suborder Megachiroptera uses echolocation, the Egyptian Fruitbat (Rousettus aegyptiacus), which also possesses excellent eyesight.
Actually there are quite a few species of bat that emit high chirping calls but instead navigate by sight. Only one member of the suborder Megachiroptera uses echolocation, the Egyptian Fruitbat (Rousettus aegyptiacus), which also possesses excellent eyesight.
I too can read Wikipedia!
That's because Megachiroptera feed on fruit, nectar or pollen. You don't need echolocation to hunt fruit, nectar or pollen. Most microchiroptera eat insects.
filbert wrote:
That's because Megachiroptera feed on fruit, nectar or pollen. You don't need echolocation to hunt fruit, nectar or pollen. Most microchiroptera eat insects.
See, that's why I mentioned the Egyptian Fruitbat, which lives on dates but uses echolocation in addition to it's other senses. Most people tend to overlook behavior as a pressure in natural selection. The fruitbat in question doesn't use echolocation to hunt, it barely possess the required equipment to use it at all. What it can do is avoid a wall in total darkness. It does not 'see' by the echoes, it only acts as a proximity detection system.
The ability to emit sound exists is a very, very large number of creatures, for various reasons. The mutation in this case would not be the ability to make a noise, most mammals can do that. It's the ability to interpret echoing sound waves that would be the mutation here. The Egyptian fruitbat uses the same range of sounds it makes to otherwise communicate with other members of it's species to navigate, and is more or less in the same range as other bats in Megachiroptera.
BTW: Actually, I just walked over to the reference shelf and used it.
I bow to your superior knowledge of bats. However, an example of one particular species that hasn't evolved the particular echolocation skills and mutations that other bats have doesn't not negate the point I was trying to illustrate and was discussing with Howard A Treesong - to wit, that there are numerous examples in nature where if one were of a religious persuasion, would appear to have the work of a creator stamped all over them. Whether you choose to believe this or choose to believe the various evolutionary and mutational theories to explain this is another matter - I think such example exist in a difficult middle ground that both viewpoints struggle to fully explain.
I think if you were a bat scientist you could use genetic tracing to find out if there was a probable common ancestor of insect eating and fruit eating bats. This would be a reasonable explanation of how echo-sounding is found in both types of bats.
The point about evolution is that there are plenty of examples where it has been shown to have worked. We have various mechanisms by which it can work. We know the method of transmission of inheritable data (genes).
We also know that every example given of Irreducible Complexity to disprove evolution (and prove Intelligent Design) has been refuted.
Overall then, the Intelligent Design theory is not required, it does not seem to be correct, and the modern scientific theory seems to be valid.
Clearly when a case is found which cannot be explained by the current scientific theory, then it will need to be re-evaluated.
Well the example of the fruit eating bat shows that you can have a species with underdeveloped echolocation traits that grant a certain degree of usefulness alongside things like normal sight. They could potentially adapt over time to rely on the echolocation more at the expense of the eyesight which would eventually become unnecessary.
The point I think was demonstrating that you don't need to jump from no echolocation to total reliance on it but that there can be intermediate stages along the way that have their uses.
...that there are numerous examples in nature where if one were of a religious persuasion, would appear to have the work of a creator stamped all over them.
It would strike me as bizarre that the vast majority of things are perfectly able to come about naturally and under their own steam without any need for external interference... but god then feels the need to override evolution and tinker with the likes of bat hearing of all things.
It's not really reasonable to look at these few examples and conclude the existence of a creator, it's rather bad science to postulate a positive result on the back of a mere gap in data. There might be something very interesting going on, but it's lazy to conclude proof of god's handiwork. One way or another they are most likely to follow conventional science like the vast majority of nature, all the popular examples of "irreducible complexity" have eventually been debunked with time.
Obviously some people will look at examples of the bat and want to see the work of god, but that's because they are desperate to see proof that validates their opinion rather than consider things in an unbiased manner.
Kilkrazy wrote:
Clearly when a case is found which cannot be explained by the current scientific theory, then it will need to be re-evaluated.
It wont be, they have been trying desperately for 200 years.
Put they act like it has happened, why not submit their results for peer review, change the face of Science as we know it, and bask in the nobel peace prize and the worldwide acclaim?
Oh yeah, because they are lying bastards who are misleading their credulous "flock" simply because the average Joe on the street doesnt have a good enough knowledge of science.
Kilkrazy wrote:
Clearly when a case is found which cannot be explained by the current scientific theory, then it will need to be re-evaluated.
It wont be, they have been trying desperately for 200 years.
Put they act like it has happened, why not submit their results for peer review, change the face of Science as we know it, and bask in the nobel peace prize and the worldwide acclaim?
Oh yeah, because they are lying bastards who are misleading their credulous "flock" simply because the average Joe on the street doesnt have a good enough knowledge of science.
Do you have something against coconuts boy? If so, its time to bring the provolone beatdown!
Coconuts. If they're good enough for mutha in T-Rex, they're good enough for you.
Kilkrazy wrote:I think if you were a bat scientist you could use genetic tracing to find out if there was a probable common ancestor of insect eating and fruit eating bats. This would be a reasonable explanation of how echo-sounding is found in both types of bats.
Holy polymerase chain reaction, Batman!
This has been done, and, indeed, at some point there was a common bat ancestor. Same bat genes, same bat genus.
filbert wrote: to wit, that there are numerous examples in nature where if one were of a religious persuasion, would appear to have the work of a creator stamped all over them.
*sigh* As someone of a religious persuasion, I have no trouble believing that the rules were set and the world let to play out without much in the way of direct intervention. Stop and consider: God tests people, because God does not know the outcome in advance. There's no point to a test if you know in advance if they're going to pass/fail, you test them because you want to be certain of something. This implies that God's omniscience is limited to the here and now.
If, then, there are things that even God does not know, then this world is most likely a test bed. Direct interaction would skew the outcome. (This is the reason for souls. It would allow a sort of side step of the Uncertainty Principle, by making the object of the experiment self observing.)
BaronIveagh wrote:*sigh* As someone of a religious persuasion, I have no trouble believing that the rules were set and the world let to play out without much in the way of direct intervention. Stop and consider: God tests people, because God does not know the outcome in advance. There's no point to a test if you know in advance if they're going to pass/fail, you test them because you want to be certain of something. This implies that God's omniscience is limited to the here and now.
If, then, there are things that even God does not know, then this world is most likely a test bed. Direct interaction would skew the outcome. (This is the reason for souls. It would allow a sort of side step of the Uncertainty Principle, by making the object of the experiment self observing.)
Genuine question as I am not a religious person; does this interpretation of "god" being all knowing but limited to only "knowing" abut the past and the present fit in with established religious thinking, or is it your own interpretation?
I've always been lead to believe that god is all knowing about everything and everywhen and although "free choice" is allowed (not sure how), god still knows the outcome of things that will come to pass... though we are still allowed to choose how to go through his "tests".
BaronIveagh wrote:*sigh* As someone of a religious persuasion, I have no trouble believing that the rules were set and the world let to play out without much in the way of direct intervention. Stop and consider: God tests people, because God does not know the outcome in advance. There's no point to a test if you know in advance if they're going to pass/fail, you test them because you want to be certain of something. This implies that God's omniscience is limited to the here and now.
If, then, there are things that even God does not know, then this world is most likely a test bed. Direct interaction would skew the outcome. (This is the reason for souls. It would allow a sort of side step of the Uncertainty Principle, by making the object of the experiment self observing.)
Genuine question as I am not a religious person; does this interpretation of "god" being all knowing but limited to only "knowing" abut the past and the present fit in with established religious thinking, or is it your own interpretation?
I've always been lead to believe that god is all knowing about everything and everywhen and although "free choice" is allowed (not sure how), god still knows the outcome of things that will come to pass... though we are still allowed to choose how to go through his "tests".
I'm not sure where it fits in, though I will state that it does not match 'mainstream' doctrine. Well, actually it matches parts, because mainstream doctrine is made up of a group of conflicting texts stitched together at various points for various reasons.
In the Beginning, (about 1000BC) there were the Jahwist and (possibly later, exact dates are subject to debate) Elohist texts, believed to be the holy texts of Judah and Israel, respectively. The Jahwist text more or less reflects the more anthropomorphic God that haggles with Abram, buries Moses, and so on. The Elohist features the more abstract, distant God that appears as a burning bush, etc. It's actually likely that the Elohist text draws strongly from the Canaanite perception of El Elyon, while the Jahwist draws heavily on the Babylonian view of gods being more like men.
(Interestingly enough, when the two were combined, some fancy editing took place. In the Elohist text, Issac is sacrificed. In the Jahwist, he lives. This made some changes necessary. Also, the nationalistic bashing of the former two Judean kingdoms for one another was mitigated, sort of.)
Deuteronomy was largely written during the time of Josiah, who's priests miraculously discovered a text that justified the things the King had been doing already without it, which were then edited further following everything going tits up when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem. (Indeed, the Ten Commandments were written in this period, as previously, the people of Judah were polytheistic, worshiping many local deities in addition to the official God of the state. The Prophet Jeremiah comments in one translation 'How do you say "We are wise, and the Lord's Torah is with us"? In fact here it was made for a lie, the lying pen of scribes ')
Around 400BC a member of the priesthood edited the entire thing together into what now makes up the Torah, tossing bits of accumulated ritual tradition and parts openly stolen from neighboring religions, such as most of Genesis previous to the creation of Adam.
Predetermination and free will are mutually exclusive. Free will has no meaning if the outcome is going to be the same no matter what you decide to do.
BaronIveagh wrote:*sigh* As someone of a religious persuasion, I have no trouble believing that the rules were set and the world let to play out without much in the way of direct intervention. Stop and consider: God tests people, because God does not know the outcome in advance. There's no point to a test if you know in advance if they're going to pass/fail, you test them because you want to be certain of something. This implies that God's omniscience is limited to the here and now.
If, then, there are things that even God does not know, then this world is most likely a test bed. Direct interaction would skew the outcome. (This is the reason for souls. It would allow a sort of side step of the Uncertainty Principle, by making the object of the experiment self observing.)
Genuine question as I am not a religious person; does this interpretation of "god" being all knowing but limited to only "knowing" abut the past and the present fit in with established religious thinking, or is it your own interpretation?
I've always been lead to believe that god is all knowing about everything and everywhen and although "free choice" is allowed (not sure how), god still knows the outcome of things that will come to pass... though we are still allowed to choose how to go through his "tests".
I'm not sure where it fits in, though I will state that it does not match 'mainstream' doctrine. Well, actually it matches parts, because mainstream doctrine is made up of a group of conflicting texts stitched together at various points for various reasons.
In the Beginning, (about 1000BC) there were the Jahwist and (possibly later, exact dates are subject to debate) Elohist texts, believed to be the holy texts of Judah and Israel, respectively. The Jahwist text more or less reflects the more anthropomorphic God that haggles with Abram, buries Moses, and so on. The Elohist features the more abstract, distant God that appears as a burning bush, etc. It's actually likely that the Elohist text draws strongly from the Canaanite perception of El Elyon, while the Jahwist draws heavily on the Babylonian view of gods being more like men.
(Interestingly enough, when the two were combined, some fancy editing took place. In the Elohist text, Issac is sacrificed. In the Jahwist, he lives. This made some changes necessary. Also, the nationalistic bashing of the former two Judean kingdoms for one another was mitigated, sort of.)
Deuteronomy was largely written during the time of Josiah, who's priests miraculously discovered a text that justified the things the King had been doing already without it, which were then edited further following everything going tits up when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem. (Indeed, the Ten Commandments were written in this period, as previously, the people of Judah were polytheistic, worshiping many local deities in addition to the official God of the state. The Prophet Jeremiah comments in one translation 'How do you say "We are wise, and the Lord's Torah is with us"? In fact here it was made for a lie, the lying pen of scribes ')
Around 400BC a member of the priesthood edited the entire thing together into what now makes up the Torah, tossing bits of accumulated ritual tradition and parts openly stolen from neighboring religions, such as most of Genesis previous to the creation of Adam.
Predetermination and free will are mutually exclusive. Free will has no meaning if the outcome is going to be the same no matter what you decide to do.
Do you have an article or link that has sources for that stuff? It's really, really interesting and I'd love to have it on hand
BaronIveagh wrote:*sigh* As someone of a religious persuasion, I have no trouble believing that the rules were set and the world let to play out without much in the way of direct intervention. Stop and consider: God tests people, because God does not know the outcome in advance. There's no point to a test if you know in advance if they're going to pass/fail, you test them because you want to be certain of something. This implies that God's omniscience is limited to the here and now.
If, then, there are things that even God does not know, then this world is most likely a test bed. Direct interaction would skew the outcome. (This is the reason for souls. It would allow a sort of side step of the Uncertainty Principle, by making the object of the experiment self observing.)
Maybe when god tests people it isn't God who wants to know the answer, maybe he tests them so that they can find the answer.
Crom wrote:All religions are recycled you can draw parallels to all stories. Hell, the great floods can be traced back to the epic of Gilgamesh.
There are silt layer deposits in the fertile crescent that support a black sea flood. Ballard did an expedition in 99 that bought up fresh water mollusk shells that carbon dated back 7,000yrs. Did god cause it probably not but still interesting.
Crom wrote:All religions are recycled you can draw parallels to all stories. Hell, the great floods can be traced back to the epic of Gilgamesh.
There are silt layer deposits in the fertile crescent that support a black sea flood. Ballard did an expedition in 99 that bought up fresh water mollusk shells that carbon dated back 7,000yrs. Did god cause it probably not but still interesting.
there's an iridium layer that dates back 65 million years ago....
I thought most of the flood stories got traced back to some kind of mega flood in the Black Sea basin about 5600 B.C. The survivors of the event scattered, and spread stories of a great flood that destroyed their entire civilization throughout the world. Read more here if you'd like.
At the end of the last ice age, which occurred a bit over 8,000 years ago, the average sea level rose 100 metres causing floods in hitherto dry land areas such as the gap between the UK and the continent we now call the English Channel.
We know there are submerged villages in such areas, which had been fertile land bridges.
While the flooding would obviously have taken place over years or decades, it is not a big stretch of the imagination to think that such events would have become part of the folk memory of late prehistoric man, and been written down later when writing was invented.
I did not mean all mythology doesn't have any factual events to it. I just said that all mythology is recycled. There is a difference in that. Some argue that Jesus was an actual person and existed, which in all honesty is highly debatable. Someone who existed during the Roman empire that made that much of an impact on society and on religion, would have been written about a lot. Though no philosophers of that time period really wrote about Jesus. In fact, there is really no reference to him at all. That doesn't mean someone like Jesus never existed. I find it hard that someone who had such an impact as Jesus did, actually not get mentioned by any major scholars or philosophers. Furthermore, there is evidence that when Christianity first came about different sects actually fought over the concept if Jesus was a Sun God, the son of a God, or a half man half god and a son of a god.
Kilkrazy wrote:There's a little black spot on the sun today.
At the end of the last ice age, which occurred a bit over 8,000 years ago, the average sea level rose 100 metres causing floods in hitherto dry land areas such as the gap between the UK and the continent we now call the English Channel.
We know there are submerged villages in such areas, which had been fertile land bridges.
While the flooding would obviously have taken place over years or decades, it is not a big stretch of the imagination to think that such events would have become part of the folk memory of late prehistoric man, and been written down later when writing was invented.
There are two theory's that support rapid flooding. Mediterranean sea inundation into the black sea and a Black sea land plug letting go under ice age melt waters.
Creationists should be simply saying God's day is actually measured by the rotation of the earth around the galactic center. (Roughly 250 million years) Instead of trying to push Collapsed Evolutionary Time which is laughable..
George Spiggott wrote:
Maybe when god tests people it isn't God who wants to know the answer, maybe he tests them so that they can find the answer.
I've generally found that killing all seven of someone's children is going a bit far to let them know they won't renounce God no matter what. God is a merciful God (every other book or two) except he seems to be willing to inflict serious suffering on what essentially amounts to a bet. Further, the being taking that bet would know better, if God was really omniscient about future events.
Further, why create the world in the first place if you automatically know everything that could possibly ever happen upon it?
Edit: Most flood stories, as several people have pointed out, probably have their roots in the Black Sea basin event. The other suggestion has been the Red Sea, but there's less evicence for that.
BaronIveagh wrote:Edit: Most flood stories, as several people have pointed out, probably have their roots in the Black Sea basin event. The other suggestion has been the Red Sea, but there's less evicence for that.
I'm also going to point out that when it comes to unstoppable, devastating catastrophes, floods are going to be one of the worst things any developing culture is going to face. You either get out of the way, or you get swept away, but what about a flood so great that nothing is high enough to escape it? It makes for a very potent embodiment of divine anger or retribution.
BaronIveagh wrote:Edit: Most flood stories, as several people have pointed out, probably have their roots in the Black Sea basin event. The other suggestion has been the Red Sea, but there's less evicence for that.
I'm also going to point out that when it comes to unstoppable, devastating catastrophes, floods are going to be one of the worst things any developing culture is going to face. You either get out of the way, or you get swept away, but what about a flood so great that nothing is high enough to escape it? It makes for a very potent embodiment of divine anger or retribution.
Or a bunch of drunken Irishmen all breaking the seal at the same time
George Spiggott wrote:
Maybe when god tests people it isn't God who wants to know the answer, maybe he tests them so that they can find the answer.
I've generally found that killing all seven of someone's children is going a bit far to let them know they won't renounce God no matter what. God is a merciful God (every other book or two) except he seems to be willing to inflict serious suffering on what essentially amounts to a bet. Further, the being taking that bet would know better, if God was really omniscient about future events.
Further, why create the world in the first place if you automatically know everything that could possibly ever happen upon it?
If God is an infinite being (or even if he isn't) then fully understanding God's motives would be difficult. You cannot use a lack of understanding of God's motives to prove God's non-existence.
George Spiggott wrote:
Maybe when god tests people it isn't God who wants to know the answer, maybe he tests them so that they can find the answer.
I've generally found that killing all seven of someone's children is going a bit far to let them know they won't renounce God no matter what. God is a merciful God (every other book or two) except he seems to be willing to inflict serious suffering on what essentially amounts to a bet. Further, the being taking that bet would know better, if God was really omniscient about future events.
Further, why create the world in the first place if you automatically know everything that could possibly ever happen upon it?
If God is an infinite being (or even if he isn't) then fully understanding God's motives would be difficult. You cannot use a lack of understanding of God's motives to prove God's non-existence.
Hence why I am ignostic more so than atheist or agnostic. I think if there truly was an omnipotent being such as a God, we could severely lack the capacity to understand what a God is, nor could we define what a God is.
George Spiggott wrote:If God is an infinite being (or even if he isn't) then fully understanding God's motives would be difficult. You cannot use a lack of understanding of God's motives to prove God's non-existence.
I didn't dispute his/her existence. I disputed that he/she was omniscient as far as future events were concerned. I'll point out that, at least in the fragmentary texts that remain from the earliest period, God never claims to be omniscient (though on occasion shows he's much better informed then a regular person would be). Only later does this idea enter the picture.
And, again, I reject Paul's assertion in Romans that no one can truly understand God (Romans 11:33-36), mostly because he turns around in Corinthians and says the opposite (1 Corinthians 14:33) in the Greek. James implies that a personal understanding of God is possible (4:8) which means that the motives of God are not outside the grasp of mortal minds. (Never minding the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas [believed written between AD 60 and AD 140] where Jesus basically tells us that in no uncertain terms, which was probably why it was declared heretical in the third century. Not because it conflicted with Jesus, but because it conflicted with the policies of the nascent church.)
BaronIveagh wrote:I didn't dispute his/her existence. I disputed that he/she was omniscient as far as future events were concerned. I'll point out that, at least in the fragmentary texts that remain from the earliest period, God never claims to be omniscient (though on occasion shows he's much better informed then a regular person would be). Only later does this idea enter the picture.
And, again, I reject Paul's assertion in Romans that no one can truly understand God (Romans 11:33-36), mostly because he turns around in Corinthians and says the opposite (1 Corinthians 14:33) in the Greek. James implies that a personal understanding of God is possible (4:8) which means that the motives of God are not outside the grasp of mortal minds.
Man can understand God, he cannot fully understand God (the finite cannot fully comprehend the infinite).
Crom wrote:Someone who existed during the Roman empire that made that much of an impact on society and on religion, would have been written about a lot. Though no philosophers of that time period really wrote about Jesus. In fact, there is really no reference to him at all. That doesn't mean someone like Jesus never existed. I find it hard that someone who had such an impact as Jesus did, actually not get mentioned by any major scholars or philosophers. Furthermore, there is evidence that when Christianity first came about different sects actually fought over the concept if Jesus was a Sun God, the son of a God, or a half man half god and a son of a god.
Except his impact wasn't that great at the time. He was one of countless Jews leading a small flock of followers, why would they write much about him?
His impact came after his death as his story grew.
Crom wrote:Someone who existed during the Roman empire that made that much of an impact on society and on religion, would have been written about a lot. Though no philosophers of that time period really wrote about Jesus. In fact, there is really no reference to him at all. That doesn't mean someone like Jesus never existed. I find it hard that someone who had such an impact as Jesus did, actually not get mentioned by any major scholars or philosophers. Furthermore, there is evidence that when Christianity first came about different sects actually fought over the concept if Jesus was a Sun God, the son of a God, or a half man half god and a son of a god.
Except his impact wasn't that great at the time. He was one of countless Jews leading a small flock of followers, why would they write much about him?
His impact came after his death as his story grew.
I find that hard to believe considering there were several sects of Christians fighting each other over who was right. Also, when else in history did anyone make an impact at all, and not get written about? Hell people that made a fraction of the impact that Jesus did made more history books and were written a lot more by the philosophers and writers of their time. Now take into an account that Jesus is an exact parallel of Horus, it goes on even further to suggest that perhaps he is not a real person. The parallels between Horus and Jesus are very strong, and the story of Horus existed 5,000 years before the story of Jesus did.
In the Bible it makes it pretty clear the Roman Government did not approve of Jesus, and that is why he was punished. The Bible talks about how big of an impact his sacrifice was. Why was he not written about, by the writers of his times? Why would he be nearly the only exception?
I find that hard to believe considering there were several sects of Christians fighting each other over who was right. Also, when else in history did anyone make an impact at all, and not get written about? Hell people that made a fraction of the impact that Jesus did made more history books and were written a lot more by the philosophers and writers of their time. Now take into an account that Jesus is an exact parallel of Horus, it goes on even further to suggest that perhaps he is not a real person. The parallels between Horus and Jesus are very strong, and the story of Horus existed 5,000 years before the story of Jesus did.
In the Bible it makes it pretty clear the Roman Government did not approve of Jesus, and that is why he was punished. The Bible talks about how big of an impact his sacrifice was. Why was he not written about, by the writers of his times? Why would he be nearly the only exception?
Tacticus, the Roman Historian, mentions Jesus as having "suffered the extreme penalty (meaning crucifixion) during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus" (Pilate himself has been confirmed to have existed during the reign of Tiberius through other archaeological finds in the former Judea). Jesus is also mentioned by the historian Josephus in his Antiquitates Judaicae. Both were written during the first century. (Remember at hte time books were expensive things that one had commissioned, and they took years to complete.)
Many books about him were written within a few years of his death, around 30 ad. Luke points out that he gathered together several existing accounts to cross reference with his own experiences. However, take into account that this religion was being suppressed by the Romans, and it's really not surprising that many early texts do not survive. Others were eliminated by the early church, deeming them heretical, as they no longer matched the position of the Church. This is, for example, how the Nag Hammadi library came to be buried in the desert.
Crom wrote:I find that hard to believe considering there were several sects of Christians fighting each other over who was right.
Sbuh?
Also, when else in history did anyone make an impact at all, and not get written about? Hell people that made a fraction of the impact that Jesus did made more history books and were written a lot more by the philosophers and writers of their time. Now take into an account that Jesus is an exact parallel of Horus, it goes on even further to suggest that perhaps he is not a real person. The parallels between Horus and Jesus are very strong, and the story of Horus existed 5,000 years before the story of Jesus did.
In the Bible it makes it pretty clear the Roman Government did not approve of Jesus, and that is why he was punished. The Bible talks about how big of an impact his sacrifice was. Why was he not written about, by the writers of his times? Why would he be nearly the only exception?
The story of a guy called Jesus going around giving politically charged religious sermons and eventually attracting the notice of Roman authorities and being crucified is not a unique one. It happened to a lot of folk at the time. He gained no great number of followers during his lifetime, why would people record things about him?
And yes, Jesus story has a lot of consistancies with Horus before him. Which means it is sensible to conclude that a guy called Jesus likely existed, and the telling of his story might have attracted elements of stories that had come before.
It is far more speculative to conclude that there could not have been a guy called Jesus.
sebster wrote:
It is far more speculative to conclude that there could not have been a guy called Jesus.
Yep.
We have about as much evidence that Socrates existed, and no one really questions that. Of course, no one tries to claim that Socrates was the son of Zeus, so that may be part of it.
sebster wrote:
It is far more speculative to conclude that there could not have been a guy called Jesus.
Yep.
We have about as much evidence that Socrates existed, and no one really questions that. Of course, no one tries to claim that Socrates was the son of Zeus, so that may be part of it.
We have proof that plenty of people existed, some of whom claimed divine forbears. However, historians of the period in that region did make note of Christ, though at the time he was mentioned once in a three page part of the 20 volume Antiquitates Judaicae, which was specifically about Judea...
BaronIveagh wrote:
We have proof that plenty of people existed, some of whom claimed divine forbears. However, historians of the period in that region did make note of Christ, though at the time he was mentioned once in a three page part of the 20 volume Antiquitates Judaicae, which was specifically about Judea...
I was speculating as to why Jesus' existence, in particular, is so often disputed when compared to other figures with similar levels of evidence establishing theirs.
BaronIveagh wrote:We have proof that plenty of people existed, some of whom claimed divine forbears. However, historians of the period in that region did make note of Christ, though at the time he was mentioned once in a three page part of the 20 volume Antiquitates Judaicae, which was specifically about Judea...
But it still isn't a first hand account, as it was written a hundred years after the death of Jesus. Nor do we have a first hand copy of this book, all we have a copies taken by Christian scholars.
It's fair to say we don't have a direct, first hand evidence of Jesus, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a guy called Jesus who led a small group of followers and gave subversive speaches about religion, because there were loads of folk doing exactly that at the time, odds are one of them was called Jesus and that he was crucified for it.
sebster wrote:
But it still isn't a first hand account, as it was written a hundred years after the death of Jesus. Nor do we have a first hand copy of this book, all we have a copies taken by Christian scholars.
It's fair to say we don't have a direct, first hand evidence of Jesus, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a guy called Jesus who led a small group of followers and gave subversive speaches about religion, because there were loads of folk doing exactly that at the time, odds are one of them was called Jesus and that he was crucified for it.
Well, no, the only first hand accounts we have are the gospel of Mark. Mark had met Jesus, but had not been present for the entire ministry, and so interviewed Peter some time later to fill in the blanks. This book is thought to have been written before 54 AD, as it's refereed to by Paul in Corinthians.
I hate to say it, but finding period documents even well preserved ones is rather hit or miss. Even books that did see a lot of copying at the time have not come down to us. The church, during the middle ages, made a very firm point to obliterate a whole lot of stuff (Sappho of Lesbos, anyone?). It was, after all the Church that arraigned for the final destruction of both the Library and Museum of Alexandria.
Those documents that we find secreted away in desert caches and graveyards and peat bogs tend to be rather fragmentary:
A part of the so-called Gospel of Mary as an example. Even if you have all the pieces, reassembling them is a time consuming process.
BaronIveagh wrote:Well, no, the only first hand accounts we have are the gospel of Mark.
True
I should have said 'we have no independant, first hand accounts' or something like that.
I hate to say it, but finding period documents even well preserved ones is rather hit or miss.
Absolutely. Survival of evidence of any kind through the ages is very hit or miss, and there's whole periods where we have a scratchy idea about the identities of kings, let alone wandering rabbis.
Well if you break down the parallels from Horus and Jesus, it is quite astonishing. They have these things in common:
* immaculate conception from a virgin mother
* Father was God (Osiris or Yehova ((Holy Spirit)) )
* Mother's names were Mary
* Father's name was Joseph
* Birth heralded by a star
* Born during Winter solstice
* Birth witnessed by Shepherds and wise men
* Both lack any data between the ages of 13 and 30
* Both had 12 disciples
* both performed miracles
* healed the sick
* both were baptized at age of 30 and their baptizer was executed
* both were killed and resurrected 3 days later
* both were killed by crucifixion
The parallels are pretty uncanny. To say they had a little in common is an understatement. In reality, they are the exact same person with the same mythos. Since the story of Jesus is pretty much a carbon copy of Horus, I can find it harder to believe he existed. Furthermore, the lack in evidence from historians, philosophers and scholars never ever wrote about a man who had such an impact just as reassuring as his story was made up. Now, I think there could have been a guy named Jesus, well technically I think Jesus was a title not a name, but was it the Jesus from the Bible? I am going to say, most likely it was not.
Crom wrote:Well if you break down the parallels from Horus and Jesus, it is quite astonishing. They have these things in common:
* immaculate conception from a virgin mother
* Father was God (Osiris or Yehova ((Holy Spirit)) )
* Mother's names were Mary
* Father's name was Joseph
* Birth heralded by a star
* Born during Winter solstice
* Birth witnessed by Shepherds and wise men
* Both lack any data between the ages of 13 and 30
* Both had 12 disciples
* both performed miracles
* healed the sick
* both were baptized at age of 30 and their baptizer was executed
* both were killed and resurrected 3 days later
* both were killed by crucifixion
In the original texts that do survive, Jesus
1) Was not born during the winter solstice (was actually in the summer, but changed to help co-opt existing festivals)
2) was not literally the son of God, this is a mistranslation between an Aramaic phrase meaning a righteous person, and the Greek.
3) Number of disciples was unclear (as low as five, as high as 70, depending on the source)
4) Mark does not mention the nativity or the virgin birth. This was added later in Luke and Matthew, both have slightly contradictory versions of events. It's likely that the names were right, however.
In the original texts Osiris (not Horus, this is an error from Massey that gets bandied about a lot) outside of archeological circles, and is dismissed within them.
1) Osiris was not raised from the dead in the same manner as Jesus. He never returned to what we would recognize as 'life'.
2) He was sealed in a box and thrown into the Nile, afterwards his wife found him and used magic to beget him a son. His brother, enraged at being thwarted, chopped him into bits. He was then reassembled and given a proper burial, at which point his spirit went on to it's new 'life' in the afterlife as a god of the underworld.
3) Joseph, taken from the Hebrew, literally comes out as 'he will add' or 'he will increase'. While Osiris was a god of the cycle of rebirth, his name is derived in part, from usr, or 'strength', representing his position as Pharaoh before his death.
Connection to Horus
1) Early Christianity seized on the image of mother and child present in art depicting Isis and Horus and recycled it.
2)Mary, or Meryt in Egyptian of the period, means 'beloved'. Interestingly, the only Mary in the Old testament is Moses sister, who was quite probably named by the Egyptians. Isis is a very different thing altogether.
3) there is no ancient source or period writing that states Horus had 12 followers. This is a modern fiction.
Crom wrote:Well if you break down the parallels from Horus and Jesus, it is quite astonishing. They have these things in common:
* immaculate conception from a virgin mother
* Father was God (Osiris or Yehova ((Holy Spirit)) )
* Mother's names were Mary
* Father's name was Joseph
* Birth heralded by a star
* Born during Winter solstice
* Birth witnessed by Shepherds and wise men
* Both lack any data between the ages of 13 and 30
* Both had 12 disciples
* both performed miracles
* healed the sick
* both were baptized at age of 30 and their baptizer was executed
* both were killed and resurrected 3 days later
* both were killed by crucifixion
In the original texts that do survive, Jesus
1) Was not born during the winter solstice (was actually in the summer, but changed to help co-opt existing festivals)
2) was not literally the son of God, this is a mistranslation between an Aramaic phrase meaning a righteous person, and the Greek.
3) Number of disciples was unclear (as low as five, as high as 70, depending on the source)
4) Mark does not mention the nativity or the virgin birth. This was added later in Luke and Matthew, both have slightly contradictory versions of events. It's likely that the names were right, however.
In the original texts Osiris (not Horus, this is an error from Massey that gets bandied about a lot) outside of archeological circles, and is dismissed within them.
1) Osiris was not raised from the dead in the same manner as Jesus. He never returned to what we would recognize as 'life'.
2) He was sealed in a box and thrown into the Nile, afterwards his wife found him and used magic to beget him a son. His brother, enraged at being thwarted, chopped him into bits. He was then reassembled and given a proper burial, at which point his spirit went on to it's new 'life' in the afterlife as a god of the underworld.
3) Joseph, taken from the Hebrew, literally comes out as 'he will add' or 'he will increase'. While Osiris was a god of the cycle of rebirth, his name is derived in part, from usr, or 'strength', representing his position as Pharaoh before his death.
Connection to Horus
1) Early Christianity seized on the image of mother and child present in art depicting Isis and Horus and recycled it.
2)Mary, or Meryt in Egyptian of the period, means 'beloved'. Interestingly, the only Mary in the Old testament is Moses sister, who was quite probably named by the Egyptians. Isis is a very different thing altogether.
3) there is no ancient source or period writing that states Horus had 12 followers. This is a modern fiction.
A lot of this is debatable, but with in the framework given. It is said that Horus had more followers as well, and so did Jesus, however there is a common ground where each is said to have 12. This of course, conflicts with other studies. No matter how much you want to nitpick it, the parallels are there and in some cases are the exact same. The Church recognizes December 25th at the birth of Christ. However, I won't argue with you that every Christian holiday is a recycled pagan/Norse and/or other religious holiday.
Regardless of how accurate it all may be, since we are discovering it's inaccuracies later on in our lives, it still draws almost near exact parallels. Hell, a lot of the bible is debatable since of course there is conflicting evidence you know, all over the place. Just like there is with some other forms of mythology. The fact we can draw parallels, which in some cases are an exact copy of Horus nearly 5,000 years later in Jesus tells me it is recycled. Even if it turns out to only be 50% true, or whatever, I still think it is obvious.
The Church, which is the authority on a lot of what is to be interpretted from the Bible probably disagrees with a lot of what you posted. Then again, they are an old archaic bunch that think in very unilateral lines.
Automatically Appended Next Post: My main point is, Horus probably did not exist either and he probably wasn't born on Winter Solstice, and he was probably loosely based off of a person that didn't do the things he did, but rather grew from urban legend to myth.
**edit again**
Another thing is the complete contradictions about Jesus' life. Bethlehem wasn't even a city until years after his death. It makes sense to me that Jews, took ancient Egyptian beliefs and amalgamated them to their own, then later in life a traveling monk from Asia met a jew and they exchanged ideas and thus was the birth of the new testament. Since it has a very Buddhist outlook compared to the old testament. The Egyptians borrowed from the Babylonians and we can even find common stories all the way back in the epic of Gilgamesh.
How hard is it to see that it has all been recycled and a lot of these people probably did not ever exist, and if they did, all information on them is pure urban legend turned into myth over time.
A lot of this is debatable, but with in the framework given. It is said that Horus had more followers as well, and so did Jesus, however there is a common ground where each is said to have 12. This of course, conflicts with other studies. No matter how much you want to nitpick it, the parallels are there and in some cases are the exact same. The Church recognizes December 25th at the birth of Christ. However, I won't argue with you that every Christian holiday is a recycled pagan/Norse and/or other religious holiday.
Regardless of how accurate it all may be, since we are discovering it's inaccuracies later on in our lives, it still draws almost near exact parallels. Hell, a lot of the bible is debatable since of course there is conflicting evidence you know, all over the place. Just like there is with some other forms of mythology. The fact we can draw parallels, which in some cases are an exact copy of Horus nearly 5,000 years later in Jesus tells me it is recycled. Even if it turns out to only be 50% true, or whatever, I still think it is obvious.
The Church, which is the authority on a lot of what is to be interpretted from the Bible probably disagrees with a lot of what you posted. Then again, they are an old archaic bunch that think in very unilateral lines.
Automatically Appended Next Post: My main point is, Horus probably did not exist either and he probably wasn't born on Winter Solstice, and he was probably loosely based off of a person that didn't do the things he did, but rather grew from urban legend to myth.
**edit again**
Another thing is the complete contradictions about Jesus' life. Bethlehem wasn't even a city until years after his death. It makes sense to me that Jews, took ancient Egyptian beliefs and amalgamated them to their own, then later in life a traveling monk from Asia met a jew and they exchanged ideas and thus was the birth of the new testament. Since it has a very Buddhist outlook compared to the old testament. The Egyptians borrowed from the Babylonians and we can even find common stories all the way back in the epic of Gilgamesh.
How hard is it to see that it has all been recycled and a lot of these people probably did not ever exist, and if they did, all information on them is pure urban legend turned into myth over time.
Um, Horus was born a God to two other gods. His claim to fame was he replaced his father and got revenge on Seth by tearing off one of his balls, losing an eye in the process. In no story does he have any disciples. The problem is it's something like a 3% similarity in that his mother got pregnant without sex. Christ didn't go around tearing other deities balls off.
This links between Horus and Christ were originally proposed by this man, Gerald Massey.
He, by the way, wrote quite extensively on other subjects such as spiritualism and further insisted that regardless of things such as dates and facts, that Egypt was the first and most perfect civilization 'And to my fellow-men I must recall
The memory too; that common motherhood" - (Massey, 'Egypt', from A Book of Beginnings, 1882)
Jean-Baptiste Pérès submitted a pamphlet called "Grand Erratum" that showed that Napoleon Bonaparte was a mythological figure, based off Apollo, using the same arguments.
The only reason Massey's work gets dragged up is Tom Harpur and conspiracy theorist D.M. Murdock (aka Acharya S) use it to try and breath life back into what Dunn politely refers to as a "thoroughly dead thesis" in his Death of Jesus.
One must remember too that terms like 'city' and 'town' had much different meanings when there might be only one million people in the entire country. Bethlehem was, however, a large town, having been retaken several times at different points, starting in 1400 bc. It was rebuilt several times, and occupied by the Romans in 100 ad who made a point to build a temple to Adonis on the site of the nativity as an insult to the inhabitants, who were driven out of the city.
A lot of this is debatable, but with in the framework given. It is said that Horus had more followers as well, and so did Jesus, however there is a common ground where each is said to have 12. This of course, conflicts with other studies. No matter how much you want to nitpick it, the parallels are there and in some cases are the exact same. The Church recognizes December 25th at the birth of Christ. However, I won't argue with you that every Christian holiday is a recycled pagan/Norse and/or other religious holiday.
Regardless of how accurate it all may be, since we are discovering it's inaccuracies later on in our lives, it still draws almost near exact parallels. Hell, a lot of the bible is debatable since of course there is conflicting evidence you know, all over the place. Just like there is with some other forms of mythology. The fact we can draw parallels, which in some cases are an exact copy of Horus nearly 5,000 years later in Jesus tells me it is recycled. Even if it turns out to only be 50% true, or whatever, I still think it is obvious.
The Church, which is the authority on a lot of what is to be interpretted from the Bible probably disagrees with a lot of what you posted. Then again, they are an old archaic bunch that think in very unilateral lines.
Automatically Appended Next Post: My main point is, Horus probably did not exist either and he probably wasn't born on Winter Solstice, and he was probably loosely based off of a person that didn't do the things he did, but rather grew from urban legend to myth.
**edit again**
Another thing is the complete contradictions about Jesus' life. Bethlehem wasn't even a city until years after his death. It makes sense to me that Jews, took ancient Egyptian beliefs and amalgamated them to their own, then later in life a traveling monk from Asia met a jew and they exchanged ideas and thus was the birth of the new testament. Since it has a very Buddhist outlook compared to the old testament. The Egyptians borrowed from the Babylonians and we can even find common stories all the way back in the epic of Gilgamesh.
How hard is it to see that it has all been recycled and a lot of these people probably did not ever exist, and if they did, all information on them is pure urban legend turned into myth over time.
Um, Horus was born a God to two other gods. His claim to fame was he replaced his father and got revenge on Seth by tearing off one of his balls, losing an eye in the process. In no story does he have any disciples. The problem is it's something like a 3% similarity in that his mother got pregnant without sex. Christ didn't go around tearing other deities balls off.
This links between Horus and Christ were originally proposed by this man, Gerald Massey.
He, by the way, wrote quite extensively on other subjects such as spiritualism and further insisted that regardless of things such as dates and facts, that Egypt was the first and most perfect civilization 'And to my fellow-men I must recall
The memory too; that common motherhood" - (Massey, 'Egypt', from A Book of Beginnings, 1882)
Jean-Baptiste Pérès submitted a pamphlet called "Grand Erratum" that showed that Napoleon Bonaparte was a mythological figure, based off Apollo, using the same arguments.
The only reason Massey's work gets dragged up is Tom Harpur and conspiracy theorist D.M. Murdock (aka Acharya S) use it to try and breath life back into what Dunn politely refers to as a "thoroughly dead thesis" in his Death of Jesus.
One must remember too that terms like 'city' and 'town' had much different meanings when there might be only one million people in the entire country. Bethlehem was, however, a large town, having been retaken several times at different points, starting in 1400 bc. It was rebuilt several times, and occupied by the Romans in 100 ad who made a point to build a temple to Adonis on the site of the nativity as an insult to the inhabitants, who were driven out of the city.
There are many scholars that draw the same parallels. There are many scholars that say Jesus was born in a cave. There will always be discrepancies in different people's findings, some with bias. You read the copy of Darwin's book that the creationists put out? They handed it out for free and it came with a 50 page preface to the book about how bad of a person Darwin was.
There are many different scholars on ancient religion and while some of these may be a stretch, I would say form what I read the general consensus is the parallels are greater than 3%.
frgsinwntr wrote:Or you could ya know look at the historical records of census that the Romans did...
Oh wait did that census thing actually happen?
According to discovered Egyptian papyri, yes, it did (more then once), however, no copy of the one from Judea for that period appears to have survived the Romans destroying Jerusalem around AD 70, when most of the records were lost. So many records were destroyed that the only evidence we have that Pilate was a real person, for example, are a few inscriptions on public buildings and being mentioned in Tacticus Annals and Philo's Legatio ad Gaium.
One key problem is that during Jesus time, practically anyone who was anyone was declaring themselves to be Gods and the sons of Gods. After all, the Emperor Caligula ruled Rome. And Rome was struggling with Judeaism all acrossed the eastern Empire. initially, Rome viewed Christianity (and, indeed, the Christians themselves shared this view at the time) simply as another Jewish sect.
An Ironic note: The only surviving contemporary histories of Rome under Caligula at this time also mention Jesus or other persons mentioned in the New Testament. Are we to assume that Caligula was also a mythological figure? After all, he himself noted the similarities between his own life and the tale of Castor and Pollux.
Crom wrote:Well that brings up my other question. Why is there no mention of Jesus until way after he died,
Because, as was explained earlier, we have nothing like a complete record of history, and there's nothing remarkable in the story of a rabbi wandering the region giving politically charged sermons.
It would be very odd for us to have anything like
and why are his stories parallels to other religions?
Because things commonly parallel other things. The fact that WWII played out with largely the same factions as WWI doesn't mean WWII didn't really happen.
The similarities with Horus are certainly interesting, and worth thinking on. But they aren't evidence of anything, and they certainly aren't a reason for believers to stop believing.
sebster wrote:
Because, as was explained earlier, we have nothing like a complete record of history, and there's nothing remarkable in the story of a rabbi wandering the region giving politically charged sermons.
It would be very odd for us to have anything like
Yet there are people who made less an impact who we know a lot more about.
Because things commonly parallel other things. The fact that WWII played out with largely the same factions as WWI doesn't mean WWII didn't really happen.
The similarities with Horus are certainly interesting, and worth thinking on. But they aren't evidence of anything, and they certainly aren't a reason for believers to stop believing.
The WWI and WWII analogy don't really fit. Perhaps we are creatures of habit, and that is why we repeat everything. The parallels are there, some are the exact same. We can draw other parallels and common themes from all forms of mythology into Christianity. Which then makes Christianity very unoriginal and very recycled. I mean we all know Christianity stole all it's holidays, why can it not also steal it's mythology? Back when mankind created the religion and wrote the bible they had no idea what the future would bring. They probably all assumed people would still take the book as fact.
While changing anyone's mind in an online debate is often a fool's errand, that's not to say that no one ever does or that arguing history is pointless. People learn stuff in these discussions all the time, and that may shape their evolving views over time. It certainly has mine.
The same old model of debate is used by pro-religious and creationists. If they cannot disprove something they attack the person who pioneered the science or history. Already proven in this thread, when I brought up the parallels of ancient egyptian religion to that of Christianity. There are plenty of scholars who subscribe to those ideas. Though there is also now publications on such people trying to discredit them, but not as scientists or scholars but as people. So, when Darwin's anniversary of the Origin of Species was about they decided (Christian organization) that they were going to give the book away for free, but with a 50 page preface written by some Christian moron and wanted to attack Darwin. It was a 50 page assault on his personal character, not his scientific findings. They made him out to be a womanizer, a sinner that committed constant debauchery, that he was pro slave ownership, and so forth.
Most of the time these scientists and scholars have no agenda rather than a deeper understanding and when the religious mongers of society cannot disprove them, or even come close to debating them or their subjects they attack them on a personal level. Which in return really just admits defeat in any form of debate.
1) Your liberties are written by man and found in the constitution, not anywhere else
2) You can pray in public, in fact, it is your 1st amendment right to do so
3) You can pray in school, open up a bible in school, hell you can have a bible group in school, but religion cannot be taught in schools
So, this is where they fear monger, and talk about a loss of freedom, when in fact no freedom has ever been taken from them. They are not being persecuted, they are not being oppressed, and at the end what do they ask for? Money, yup that is right, they ask for money. Of course, though it is for a good cause.
The problem I have with trying to tie in religion to history, is in fact, there are things in the bible that we know did happen. Empires did fall, certain figures mentioned have historical records and so forth. What I don't like is when anything conflicts that person must've had an agenda, they must have been a horrible rotten down right dirty bastard of a person. A total rogue and deadbeat of society. Instead of using study, logic, reasoning, and building facts to back their case they do things like personal attacks. They love to bring up the fact Darwin apparently cried for Christ on his death bed. Just like every other historian or scientist was crazy, or to their standards an ass of society.
Then they love to bring up how they are being oppressed, but in that video link, Cameron couldn't be any more wrong. You are allowed to pray in public, you can read the bible in public, you can even peacefully assemble in the public. However, religion cannot be taught in public schools via the separation clause. The Christian right uses things like intelligent design to get their agenda back into academia, just like they are trying to debunk evolution by handing out free copies of the Origin of Species with a crappy non scientific 50 page foreword in the book with zero science trying to debunk Darwin.
History can be brought up and discussed, but it is hardly ever taken with serious points.
Crom wrote:The same old model of debate is used by pro-religious and creationists. If they cannot disprove something they attack the person who pioneered the science or history. Already proven in this thread, when I brought up the parallels of ancient egyptian religion to that of Christianity.
You brought up Massey. His work is and has been repeatedly refuted by historians, archaeologists, AND religious scholars.
Let's try logic for a moment: Tacticus, who decries Christianity as a 'most mischievous superstition' in his Annals, goes on to ad, on the spread of Christianity from 'Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular." and writing within a few decades of the Crucifixion, recognizes Jesus as having been a real person, some decades earlier. Given the more or less anti-Christian stance he took, I suspect if Christ was fictional, he would have been quick to pounce on this, having lived at a time when witnesses and records might still be had.
Crom wrote:
There are plenty of scholars who subscribe to those ideas. Though there is also now publications on such people trying to discredit them, but not as scientists or scholars but as people. So, when Darwin's anniversary of the Origin of Species was about they decided (Christian organization) that they were going to give the book away for free, but with a 50 page preface written by some Christian moron and wanted to attack Darwin. It was a 50 page assault on his personal character, not his scientific findings. They made him out to be a womanizer, a sinner that committed constant debauchery, that he was pro slave ownership, and so forth.
Most of the time these scientists and scholars have no agenda rather than a deeper understanding and when the religious mongers of society cannot disprove them, or even come close to debating them or their subjects they attack them on a personal level. Which in return really just admits defeat in any form of debate.
While I can't comment on the 50 page slam of Darwin, as I don't have that edition, I will point out the vicious attacks by the magazine Punch against Richard Owen, one of Darwin's foremost opponents at the time. While I decry slander in general, I would suggest that this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. There has been a long history of venom on both sides of the issue, further complicated by the fact that Huxley, Darwin's bulldog, was also the source of the term 'agnosticism'.
Personally, I believe that schools need to stick to facts, or at least political fictions, and there are, in fact, facts that support the idea of evolution. As far as 'intelligent design' goes, I think it's a load of excrement, but the idea that life, like certain crystals, has a self organizing element is, actually, a good theory to explain certain aspects of natural selection, though it is not currently mainstream.
I am not a historian or a theist scholar. What I do fine extraordinary about the claims being made and sometimes they do lack citations, however, when I search for any debunking of such claims I find tons of religious gibberish, and petty arguments. They like to argue that the Egyptian word for virgin can also mean young woman, well which is it? Is it virgin, or is it young lady? While I do agree with you, that there are definitely inconsistencies in such claims I still draw parallels. Like for example Horus being a Sun god, is true, that was one of his forms, but he also had many others. So, in some cases it may not be true. Regardless of how accurate each parallel is, you can still draw it out to other mythos, including Christianity. While in some cases the direct parallel may not be applicable, but the theme or concept is. Death and resurrection, immaculate birth miraculous birth, the number of disciples is debatable on both sides, yet they still had them.
I am not set in stone on some of the claims, never was, simply just pointing them out. However, I do think they actually do merit some validity in paralleling with other mythos. Ideas are changed, sometimes slightly, sometimes more so, but still in the end recycled. How many archetypes and parallels can we draw from other mythologies before Christianity? Are they also false?
i need to brush up on Egyptian mythology I did read a bunch of it back in the day but it was never my favorite. I was more of a Greek/Norse student than I was any other mythology. Perhaps I made such claims in haste, but I still stand by the fact that there are parallels and common themes recycled throughout the ages on religion.
Crom wrote:Yet there are people who made less an impact who we know a lot more about.
Yes, but as I've explained several times now his impact came almost entirely after his life. In his lifetime Jesus was very obscure. Societies don't keep track of every wandering preacher just in case a religion might spring up aroudn their life decades and centuries afterwards. Even if they do keep track, there's no certainty of those records surviving until the modern age.
Do you get that now?
The WWI and WWII analogy don't really fit
It was a deliberately loose analogy.
Perhaps we are creatures of habit, and that is why we repeat everything.
And why wouldn't such parallels extend to religion? Hey, given the nature of the coming of a God, why wouldn't it be foretold in earlier myths?
I'm not a Christian. I just think it is important to realise that the presence of similarities in earlier myths doesn't count as evidence that the story couldn't have happened.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:My 2 cents, arguing history is pointless because no one was there. You'll believe what you want to believe regardless of proof.
So that's it? All those scholars attempting to piece together different theories about how things worked, then looking for evidence to support it... that's all just people arguing whatever they want to believe?
I am not a historian or a theist scholar. What I do fine extraordinary about the claims being made and sometimes they do lack citations, however, when I search for any debunking of such claims I find tons of religious gibberish, and petty arguments. They like to argue that the Egyptian word for virgin can also mean young woman, well which is it? Is it virgin, or is it young lady? While I do agree with you, that there are definitely inconsistencies in such claims I still draw parallels. Like for example Horus being a Sun god, is true, that was one of his forms, but he also had many others. So, in some cases it may not be true. Regardless of how accurate each parallel is, you can still draw it out to other mythos, including Christianity. While in some cases the direct parallel may not be applicable, but the theme or concept is. Death and resurrection, immaculate birth miraculous birth, the number of disciples is debatable on both sides, yet they still had them.
It's highly contextual, which one they mean. In the case of Isis, it probably means she got pregnant without having had sex, not that she had never previously had sex. (having had four other children, all minor deities, previous to this) Remember that Isis and Horus were both composite deities, Isis having merged with Hathor, Horus having merged with Ra, due to the very late rise of the cult of Ra during the late dynasties. The problem here is that Hathor was originally Ra's mother, Isis Horus' wife. So to make them interchangeable, Horus became Osiris reborn. However, this did not happen until the Greco-Roman period.
Crom wrote:
I am not set in stone on some of the claims, never was, simply just pointing them out. However, I do think they actually do merit some validity in paralleling with other mythos. Ideas are changed, sometimes slightly, sometimes more so, but still in the end recycled. How many archetypes and parallels can we draw from other mythologies before Christianity? Are they also false?
i need to brush up on Egyptian mythology I did read a bunch of it back in the day but it was never my favorite. I was more of a Greek/Norse student than I was any other mythology. Perhaps I made such claims in haste, but I still stand by the fact that there are parallels and common themes recycled throughout the ages on religion.
You're basically describing Jungian Archetypes. There are a great many themes which recur throughout all belief systems. After all, there are only so many ways to be 'reborn', for example.
An interesting note: you aren't entirely off base with the idea of Egypt influencing Christianity, however, you need to look back further. There has been a theory floating around for a while now that Moses was one of the fleeing Egyptian nobility after the death of Akhenaten, and brought the idea of monotheism to Judea. It really has never gained much traction, but hasn't really been disproved, either.
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