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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.

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?


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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.

Orlanth wrote:

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.

Crom wrote:

... ...

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.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Crom wrote:

... ...

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.

This.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Crom wrote:

... ...

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

Crom wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Crom wrote:

... ...

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?

Mike Noble wrote:

Crom wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Crom wrote:

... ...

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.

Crom wrote:

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.

corpsesarefun wrote:

Crom wrote:

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.

Crom wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:

Crom wrote:

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.

All theoretical physics is just science fiction.

Yeah, just popping in here to say that Dinosaurs eating Coconuts has become one of my running gags, just so you are aware.

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.

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.

How can they prove this claim that T-rex eats cocanuts?

They have found other dinosaur bones with T-rex teeth marks and even teeth in them showing that T-rex would eat other dinosaurs.

So to say that it eats cocanuts is a bit off.

Its a predator or in recent evidence a scavenger. But its certainly not a plant eater.

Yak9UT wrote:How can they prove this claim that T-rex eats cocanuts?

They have found other dinosaur bones with T-rex teeth marks and even teeth in them showing that T-rex would eat other dinosaurs.

So to say that it eats cocanuts is a bit off.

Its a predator or in recent evidence a scavenger. But its certainly not a plant eater.

No no no...

Those are the bones of giant coconuts, not dinosaurs.

The Creation Museum theme song?

Has meangreenstompa's wife joined the forum?

corpsesarefun wrote:Has meangreenstompa's wife joined the forum?

Indeed! Ages ago actually, but I rarely post.

Oh how adorable