The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by nigelc Aren't Holy books written by men?

If boss dictates a letter to his secretary, in your term who is writer?

Originally Posted by dugan So Salman Rushdie's book "caused violence", but the Koran has nothing to do with the countless acts of violence committed by those who make no distinction between its content and their political views. Uh huh. BTW, ShanAaali, you've revealed yourself to be both a creationist and a 9/11 truther. I find it quite fair to say that taking either position means you need to do a better job of thinking things through. And by "things", I mean things in general.

This is your ignorance you are comparing human written book to God's. And I am not truther of 9/11. I just conveyed what I saw. This is very much true you convey what you see on TV. No one of us gone back to cross verify. So your suggestion for me to think applies to you as well...

Originally Posted by PrinceSharma But it's still really frustrating to have a open debate with a man running in circles, though. May the lord Bruce Lee's shower of wisdom and peace be upon me and I could ignore it

I more God got added yesterday in list. Lord Bruce Lee... Great !!! Next is harry potter i guess....

Originally Posted by ShaanAli People like this mentality only cause the trouble in world. Mind it. And you didnt answer my question: If I publish a book stating very wrong about your family, will you just pardon me?

No, refusing to unambiguously and strongly condemn anyone who threatens someone with death for writing a book causes trouble in the world. Using speech to criticize intolerance, injustice, obscurantism, and superstition is a good thing.

Sorry, I missed your question. Depending on the circumstances I would either 1) indeed just pardon you, 2) publicly refute whatever erroneous claims where made in the book, and/or 3) sue you for libel if appropriate.

If hypothetically I was a public figure, it would probably be 2 and/or 3. If I'm just me and someone talks shit about my family, then it would probably be 1.

As an example, let's pretend that President Obama was my brother or something and we have all of these people out there making outrageous claims about his citizenship and questioning the authenticity of his birth certificate, as well as posting racist images. My course of action would be to point out the factual inaccuracies of their position, to point out their rank bigotry and racism, and probably to make fun of them for being idiots.

What I would under no circumstances do is to send death threats or in any way advocate violence against them. And any right minded person ought to condemn in no uncertain terms those who do advocate violence as an appropriate response to speech. Not excuse the perpetrators and condemn those speaking for offending someone's sensibilities.

Originally Posted by SigTerm You have quite a low opinion about humans, don't you? There are 6.7 billions people on the planet, so probability of you being correct is almost zero.

Oh I didnt know you will start counting mathematically.

Well there are ofcourse exceptions, one of such non-muslim I met few years back. I was amazed seeing her. Thats true people do charity, but such people are on fingers. That will not help to society. We have number of poor list bigger then richer. And I dont mean here charity giving few bucks on street beggars.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Poor people aren't brought into existence by lack of charities. Many people are responsible themselves for being poor. No matter how many charities are there, it will not fix the problem.

If you teach them how to survive, there is nothing better then this. Sometimes there are some families who don't have any earner in family. In todays world surviving is not only need. There are families their wages are not good enough for them to send their kids to school or pay medical expenses. So its our duty to help them. While helping again its our duty for them not to become dependent on that. This may paralyze them. God said, you help others, I will help you. If a religion making a must for you to give charity, whats wrong in that.

Originally Posted by ShaanAli God messed up or you are messing up, who will decide? ... I agree to you there is no peace in world, but did you ever think why there is no peace? Nuclear bomb is biggest threat, who invented that technology? Who is carrying most number of such bombs? Who used that so far in the world? One country is fully destroyed in suspecting of nuclear bomb, who is responsible for that?

If there's a god and humans are god's creations, then deity is responsible for ALL their faults. By definition deity is omnipotent, and can do anything, so any kind of "wrong" human behavior is a design flaw, and deity's fault. By the same logic, Any kind of disorder/imperfection in the world is also design flaw, and (once again) a deity's fault. Also, deity is unwilling to fix design problems despite supposedly having an unlimited power.

There's also a well-known problem:

if God is unable to prevent evil, he is not omnipotent if God is not willing to prevent evil, he is not good if God is willing and able to prevent evil, then why is there evil?

Originally Posted by SL00b That's simply not true. While perhaps not every single detail can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is plenty of corroborating evidence, scientific experiments, and technical experts that have established that the official version of what happened on 9/11 is generally correct. Furthermore, the idea that such a giant, evil conspiracy could happen with the participation of so many Americans is ludicrous, as it flies in the face of one of the primary defining characteristics of the American people, which is we can't keep our mouths shut. Secrets of national importance are leaking out of the White House daily, and you think thousands can keep secrets when blabbermouth tendencies are exacerbated by matters of conscience?

In other words not proof.

When we have a murder trial for one person, the prosecution must prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Nothing changes when the number of victims is increased. Secondly, not all of the information is available, even through FOIA. You cannot prove something without all of the information. And finally, the OS is a conspiracy theory by definition.

Religion and politics, bedfellows for as long as they exist.

Originally Posted by ShaanAli I more God got added yesterday in list. Lord Bruce Lee... Great !!! Next is harry potter i guess....

Lolz, why do have to prove that you don't understand pun? I know you don't.

Originally Posted by PrinceSharma Lolz, why do have to prove that you don't understand pun? I know you don't.

Your pun will be reality after few decades... stay tuned.

The Church Of The SubGenius: less harmful additives than other religions.
Praise "Bob"!

Originally Posted by linuxpokernut In other words not proof. When we have a murder trial for one person, the prosecution must prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Nothing changes when the number of victims is increased. Secondly, not all of the information is available, even through FOIA. You cannot prove something without all of the information. And finally, the OS is a conspiracy theory by definition. Religion and politics, bedfellows for as long as they exist.

And my point is, the official story is proven beyond reasonable doubt. The truthers are guilty of confusing the issue by making up stories that are clearly contradicted by the evidence. For instance, the towers did not fall at freefall speed, we know this because we have tons of video from multiple angles, and we know how to calculate freefall. The samples of alleged nanothermite are not nanothermite, because they're hundreds of micrometers across, we know that because the guy who collected them put a scale in the photos themselves, and micro does not equal nano.

I don't know what paperwork you think you're going to find that proves planes didn't crash into those buildings, burn fuel, and weaken steel, since we all saw the first two and can easily infer the third, which has also been demonstrated in numerous scientific experiments.

And yes, the official story is, by definition, a conspiracy. Just because many conspiracy theories are stupid doesn't mean they all are. The elegance of the official conspiracy is that it doesn't need many conspirators. The alternative requires thousands of them, most of them Americans plotting against their own people. There's no way that gets kept quiet.

Originally Posted by ShaanAli And you didnt answer my question: If I publish a book stating very wrong about your family, will you just pardon me?

Depending on what you said, I'd either ignore you, write my own book telling the truth, and/or take you to court for libel.

What I wouldn't do is order your death, because I'm a better person than you are.

Originally Posted by ShaanAli Its not just thinking, its under practice. Hinduism has divided the God based on Cast, Region, Race, Work etc etc.... Religious books are not just meant to be read and keep in corner. They should be in practice. The biggest Hinduism problem is they are very far from original scripts. Ramayana and Mahabharata are just epics. Unfortunately no one has time to read Vedas, which are supposed to be read first. I dont know the reason of this.

Of course that's bad. That's not how Hinduism was supposed to be. It's called deformity by time.
And that is why the two Hindus messing up with your preaching here didn't claim big size that their religions shows up how a religion should be at the very first place. Did they?
It's you to have the only claim to live by the real thing, sir. true for you. not for others.

In flow with this, I for myself know the potency of the religion I was born under and understand the flaws of it. And I have found my own way I out of it. Doesn't matter I follow it blindly or not. That's why I question Hinduism and that's why I can question anybody claiming his way is BEST. Right?
Had you been reading my previous posts replying yours, you would have got this beforehand, and that is why I accused you of skipping parts.

Originally Posted by ShaanAli If you would be asking this (or similar) question to me from Quran, your next line would be nothing but insulting the God. And there would 3-4 more posts afterwards from others clapping your reaction. this is how I got reaction in this thread from day one. .

No.
You must get it asap that for a non-Muslim (me, Anisha or anybody) it doesn't really matter what's there in Quran, holy in real or not. Why? think yourself, that's really simple.

Originally Posted by ShaanAli I never intend to hurt anyone. There are some people who think they will be considered as smart if they put others down. I am not one of them.

Going by some of your previous excavated replies quoting mine, I can take this over me.
If you feel put down by me somewhere, safely take it over YOU as a poster here, not your faith or Quran. I'm not going to do that.

If you AGAIN recollect, I got my own very personal reasons to respect Quran (or by that fact any holy book for that matter, I believe in openness, being taught that) . (why?)-> read my old posts.
But I can not respect a person of any faith who chooses to remain in a knot in spite of being asked to provide some generic view of himself, not what a book says. Simple as that, buddy?

So take it this way, I'm questioning your brain and your thinking since long, not your faith. And you fail so far.

Regards.

Originally Posted by ShaanAli Your pun will be reality after few decades... stay tuned.

No, there are already dozens of self proclaimed Gods out there.
For me, it doesn't at all matter and won't ever.
I was born free, would stay free and would die free.

Regards.

Originally Posted by reed9 There should be respect for people, but people's beliefs and ideas are fair and proper targets for criticism, even vehement, impolite criticism.

By that logic, I can go around (IRL) spouting about how free will is an illusion and how nobody should believe in it, and how nothing matters in life because everything is predetermined. The only reason I do that here is because the internet is the only place where I won't get outright punched in the face for being a fatalist jack@$$. That, and I'm just waiting for somebody to break down the many(!) arguments against free will, if they think they can.

Seriously, if you can find any logical alternative to fatalism in lacking "free will", I'd like to hear it. That bit by Daniel Dennett about how "belief in free will is necessary for free will" pretty much amounts to a reinforcement of "ignorance is bliss". In other words, once you've been shown the fatalistic reality, there is no turning back; you've been poisoned. You either have to play dumb or be miserable for the rest of your life.