The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Contradicting science is not just an "opposing view" under freedom of speech.

Originally Posted by brianL The Bible (Old Testament) is just Hebrew mythology. It's not real history. The New Testament may have some truth in it. If the real Jesus existed, he was probably a militant anti-Roman, Jewish fundamentalist. Strongly opposed to the collaborators of the Jewish establishment. Most likely violent - not "gentle Jesus, meek and mild". That's why the Romans executed him.

Many feel that way. It is your right to believe as much or as little of the Bible as you want, but personally, I wouldn't agree. Jews trace their descent from Abraham through his son Issac; Muhammed (and probably many in Saudi Arabia) traced themselves from Abraham through his son Ishmael; Most other Arabs trace their lineage from Abraham through the sons of Abraham's second wife, Keturah. The genealogy is there.

Now Jewish tradition holds that Abraham (who very probably existed) met Noah's son Shem. Certainly, their lives overlapped, according to the dates in Scripture. Now Noah was in the tenth generation from Adam, as people before the Flood apparently had longer lifespans.

Which generation in the genealogy didn't have parents, and how did they manage?

You may laugh at the above, but everyone had parents, and the Bible lists them. You would correctly reject non-contemporaneous accounts. But accounts appear to have been made every few generations. The eldest sons were recorded, as their eldest son would be the next Patriarch. Records by Adam are there, probably written on clay tablets, as you can see from the Hebrew colophons in Genesis 2:4 & 5:2. In our Bible, these colophons or headers appear at the end of the document rather than the beginning.

As for Jesus, as you feel the New Testament has some truth in it, Jesus is on record as saying the reverse of what you think.
To the Jews: "Pay back Caesar's things (=taxes) to Caesar…" Matt.22:15-22.
And to Pontius Pilate: "Jesus answered: “My Kingdom is no part of this world. If my Kingdom were part of this world, my attendants would have fought…" from John 18:36. They didn't fight.
That hardly sounds like a militant, which is one of the reasons he was rejected by the religious leaders

Simon Bar Kokhba was the militant fundamentalist about a century after Jesus. Wikipedia has a fairly decent piece on him. He was the reason Jews ended up as persecuted minorities spread like butter throughout the Roman Empire.

Sorry bussiness_kid but you are just brain washed. No person could possible reach this kind of conclusions only reading Bible. I knew enough about Jehova Witnes'es. They were very active time ago here. Now seems disappeared. I remember leaflets from Watch Tower? Essentially all about is to memorize these leaflets and repeat correctly.

Originally Posted by YesItsMe Contradicting science is not just an "opposing view" under freedom of speech.

Huh? What do you mean by this?

Originally Posted by business_kid Folks posting here have an interest in religion(s). You don't. You're a one-trick pony, enorbet. You think, like me, that you have the answer. But your contribution to the debate, your one trick, is doubt, scepticism, ridicule and in a religious discussion that is about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit (to quote Billy Conolly).

Once again facts refute your position as stated. As of this moment there are 240 responders who are Firm Believers or Theists, 162 on the fence as Deists and Agnostics, and 314 declare as Atheist. Any manner in which you parse those numbers shows this is by no means a thread for the deeply religious, perhaps especially fundamentalists. Personally, I applaud both LQN and this thread for being egalitarian. You are apparently projecting your own position and desires, on something outside your self. That's not dialogue.

Originally Posted by business_kid You actually don't have the answer. You threw out religion a long time ago. But you do have a faith, because science doesn't have all the answers. Science is supposed to be proved by experiment. But the only scientific experiments on Evolution (Mutation Breeding) were total failures, and we have the papers by evolutionists from the 1930s to the 1980s to prove it. Science can't explain: how the supposed big bang was so perfectly exploded; how the singularity got there in the first place; how the first self replicating cell was formed, and many other things. You ignore the consequence that if the first life never happened, there would not be life; If (in your version of events) the singularity didn't get there or explode, and the Big Bang never happened, there wouldn't be a universe. I've told you to put up or shut up on these points before, and you chose to shut up.

Firstly, AFAIK I do not have faith, at the very least in my understanding of what Faith is, namely belief without evidence. I have a sliding scale of confidence. For example while I can't say 100% that Unicorns didn't ever or wouldn't ever exist, I can say I don't believe they exist now or have existed in the recent past as there is zero evidence, outside Fairy Tales and Fantasy, that they are real creatures. They are fictional... period. Moving a step toward reduced confidence, I am utterly confidant that Evolution is real but I'm equally certain there is a lot more to discover, so it is somewhat less than 100% but the fundamentals seem provably solid.

I am rather appalled actually that you imagine in your wildest fever dream that I "chose to shutup" on your questions about the initiation of Life on Earth and especially Big Bang. I stated that we do not yet know with high confidence how the first lifeforms began but that is not the same as denying it was a natural chemical process, let alone admitting "it had to be X or Y". We simply don't know much yet, just way more than we used to. Whatever term you wish to use, the Universe IS expanding, which means definitively that our Universe regressively beghan from a point and in fact we can trace that back, even have a photograph of it, just a few BILLIONTHS of a second after the singularity. There is still a LOT to discover but we do know that much - Big Bang happened, whether you like it or not.

Originally Posted by business_kid My point is that people don't have all the answers. The answers are all incomplete when viewed from certain aspects. So don't bombastically denigrate the choices of other folks who have chosen to explore different avenues. Start your own thread - "Anti-religion, Atheism & Science" or the like and make posts about peering up that SuperMassive black hole in the posterior of the Universe, or whatever folks like you want to discuss. I promise not to post there and point out how full of <expletive> they all are.

You can argue to your hearts content but if your sole evidence is a 2000 year old conglomeration of Myth, you should understand that many don't find that objective evidence at all. That does not mean bibles, or any other Myth, has no value. They are a "looking glass" into more primitive, ancient times and people, and serve as an important step in the progression of human understanding.

Originally Posted by ntubski Huh? What do you mean by this?

The term "an opposing view" is not quite useful for obvious misinformation.

Originally Posted by enorbet Firstly, AFAIK I do not have faith, at the very least in my understanding of what Faith is, namely belief without evidence.

Of course you have faith. You view of science is totally religious. Even scientists have doubts. But you do not. Which is behavior of religious zealot.

Say in terms of what can be verified neither evolution nor Bing-Bang can be verified. They are just mind plays. Some create sci-fi novels some evolution theories.

You are ignorant - like bussiness_kid - you don't want to accept that you are ignorant. This is why for both of you it is so easy to explain everything. You with help of supposed "science" - bussiness_kid with help of Bible.

You have just some articles in popular science magazines while bussiness_kid is reading its leaflets from Watch Tower.

Just go to University, learn something. And stop spreading you totally senseless concepts. Senseless, useless making people people to feel that they know something.

You don't pretend to be surgeon and provide surgery to you family, don't you? But youpretend to be knowledgeble person about Einstein GR. Stop this. You are making only fool yourself.

Here you find explanation what Bing-Bang is https://www.amazon.com/Semi-Riemanni.../dp/0125267401

I can provide you with summary: it is general theorem stating that some cosmological models of our Universe based on GR are incomplete - in sense you will find in this book. It is purely mathematical statement. Usually connected with Hawking and Penrose.

There are plenty of cosmological models based on Einstein GR. And some of them do not have Bing-Bang. But for some reasons physicist reject them.

Say Godel model was rejected due to presence of time loops. And so on.

Go to school if you are interested in all this. But probably you are programmer or worse admin bored sitting eight hours a day at computer - nothing really happens so you are just killing your time.

Originally Posted by enorbet It is firmly confirmed that a gene pool of just 2, let alone from the same family, is nowhere near sufficient to reproduce even a moderate sized tribe of healthy individuals.

A tiny gene pool is not ideal but it isn't necessarily an extinction sentence. Ask the Mauritius kestrel (now at around 400 from one known female in the 70s) or the cheetah (appear to be descended from about 7 individuals, 10,000 years ago). While I'm not exactly up on young-earth theories, I have heard it suggested that the original genomes were idealised - no defective alleles - so inbreeding depression wouldn't wipe them out as long as their environment was reasonably stable. An accelerated rate of mutation and/or gene transfer would presumably be easy for an advanced being to arrange.

I get it that you assume I have faith, igadoter, IMHO because many of those who have faith cannot apparently imagine any other way for anyone else. Fundamentalists not only like to but NEED to equate Religion with Science. They do not equate. You assume I have no doubts when it should be utterly obvious that I do as the level of percentages of confidence reduce or are refuted by stronger evidence. It may not be a weekly occurrence but in the years I have been involved with LQN (and other message boards) I have often admitted mistaken conclusions here publicly and in print.

I have no problem whatsoever in finding myself wrong on a subject. There is no shame in my mind in being mistaken, only in staying that way once compelling evidence is in. That's how we progress.

BTW I have a University degree in Engineering (requiring Advanced Mathematics btw) , have a paid and free subscriptions to numerous scientific sites and services like arXiv.org and Nature. ALL models of the Universe are incomplete... some just have more repeatable evidence than others. Your condescending assumptions belong to you. I won't rise to your baiting.

Note : Just FTR Godel is rejected not just "for some reason" but exactly because of serious Time issues that have zero backing in any experiment or even anecdotal observation. It's an interesting mathematical exercise but as in all forms of Logic it is essential to begin with a solid premise. Godel does not.

Originally Posted by igadoter Sorry bussiness_kid but you are just brain washed. No person could possible reach this kind of conclusions only reading Bible. I knew enough about Jehova Witnes'es. They were very active time ago here. Now seems disappeared. I remember leaflets from Watch Tower? Essentially all about is to memorize these leaflets and repeat correctly.

Coming from where you are, your remarks are very understandable. I'm convinced, rather than brain washed. In my posts, I have quoted Scripture, historical accounts, traditions, and tried to clarify how accurately I viewed each source. I grew up in your own faith, and I got the same ritual (Mass) every week, with a few innocuous verses from a gospel, and a few harmless words from an epistle. Nothing meaningful was ever said. So I had never seen or understood meaningful words in Scripture, let alone meditated on them, before I met Jehovah's Witnesses. Then I started checking all right, to give them a hard time.

If you care to mention what particular conclusions you feel I couldn't reach, I will address them. But Matthew 24:45-47 points to a 'faithful servant giving (spiritual)food at the right time.' That servant we believe to be a group of people, as our work is worldwide. Their information, diligence and understanding is unparalleled, and I can draw on their accumulated knowledge. In fact if you click on 'jw.org / About us / Conventions' you can sample the annual 2021 Convention programme and level of insight into Scripture. It's in about 450 languages.

You're right we have disappeared from our ministry. Since March 2020 we haven't been around, except where Covid is not an issue. As for how we do it, (reading from tracts, etc), that may be true of people without the local language or under Communist rule. But the people here from your country follow more productive methods in unity with the rest of the world. Everybody has met us, so people know, and I see no reason to repeat them.

EDIT: The Bible I found was like a large jig-saw puzzle. I got the outline, but everything else was a mystery. I needed someone to put some pieces in, and then I could connect to them, and suddenly things started to fit together. Only then did it make sense.

I consider a wonderment credence is given Sheep Herders cause they are local, and they can relate to sheep herding.

But anything outside of sheep herders. Islam. Buddha. Hinduism. Native American belief system.

Is full of snake oil writings. Cuz it is alien. So it becomes a issue.

All the while harping on how they have a open mind. All I experience in real life is just agendas.
From TV commercials showing donations being needed by such and such church;
Living in Tx. That is a normal agenda. Then when they get powerful enough. They start changing the laws of the state I live in. Like I said. Agendas.

They say they are christians. Whatever. So far. I see more harm from the religious right than good deeds.

Originally Posted by YesItsMe The term "an opposing view" is not quite useful for obvious misinformation.

I don't think it's useful to label honestly held religious beliefs as "misinformation". Even if the belief seems obviously nonsensical to you.

Having beliefs which contradict science is not misinformation.
Claiming that beliefs which contradict science are what actually happened in the real world is misinformation.

Originally Posted by rokytnji I consider a wonderment credence is given Sheep Herders cause they are local, and they can relate to sheep herding. But anything outside of sheep herders. Islam. Buddha. Hinduism. Native American belief system. Is full of snake oil writings. Cuz it is alien. So it becomes a issue. All the while harping on how they have a open mind. All I experience in real life is just agendas. From TV commercials showing donations being needed by such and such church; Living in Tx. That is a normal agenda. Then when they get powerful enough. They start changing the laws of the state I live in. Like I said. Agendas. They say they are christians. Whatever. So far. I see more harm from the religious right than good deeds.

Interesting and insightful post.

The Sheep & goats illustration was useful because in Israel, Angora goats were raised, which look quite like sheep from a distance. But sheep could be (and were) trained to respond to their shepherd's call - Hence lines like "I know my sheep and my sheep know me."

I agree 100% with your conclusion. "They say they are christians. …I see more harm …"

The Biblical imagery of this depicts false religion as a prostitute who has had an immoral relationship with the world's ruling powers much like the Jewish religious leaders had with the Romans. In WW1, every priest here preached sermons urging conscription, enlisted men after the service, and got one shilling(=€0.05¢) per conscript, which was not an insignificant sum in those days, especially if dozens enlisted. Most of these went out to trench warfare with insufficient training.

EDIT: For the record, we don't vote & remain neutral, except when we might be seeking freedom of worship, or planning permission. But those together can backfire. We had some planning appeal in New York, with a peaceful march, and the mayor received a deputation with our petition. He invited them to look out the window at their marchers. "I see maybe 7,000 people down there," he said "But I don't see one vote…"

Originally Posted by YesItsMe Having beliefs which contradict science is not misinformation. Claiming that beliefs which contradict science are what actually happened in the real world is misinformation.

I've been leaving you two alone on this one but allow me to ask: What if the 'misinformation' is backed by history of the time, is found in a number of folklores and/or has supporting archaeological evidence? I'm purposely not mentioning any specific event. Because the above quoted statement presumes

1. God does not exist (which I presume you two believe)
2. The knowledge of Science today about what is possible is absolute - that is, nothing else will be discovered.