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firm believer 225 29.92%
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Old 07-18-2011, 07:10 AM   #2056
Arcane
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One more question i should ask to believers: What God has ever done for us or you in particular since it exists you claim that clearly shows he exists and cares about you and us? Let me guess..nothing except forcing you to believe in it and offering non-prooved afterlife if you play your cards correct right? You got life from parents and you die because of law of nature. Nothing that indicates miracle here. And yes humans and other living beeings don't need God to learn basic stuff in life. In fact we survived this long and whole 911 system for example is based on what we learn through our existance - when you are hurt or feel sick who you are going to to get help? Not God but doctor. When your house is on fire who helps you? Again not God but firefighters. When you are bullied who will help you? Police not God..and they don't use magic or God knowledge to help you. We don't need crystal ball to predict most stuff that uses facts as base and we can easily know if you will refuse any human help and wait that God will come save you you will just die in blind faith. You exist, can use computers and cars and weapons etc. for same reason - it is possible because reality allows that. They use human acquired knowledge about reality which they learned themselves without God theory. Also don't say stuff like lightning strike is God weapon - it is nature fact that science can recreate if it had enough materials needed to make it happen. Also even though some people under that video i mentioned before say bullets are made from ideas well ideas that don't match reality is not going to become reality and Neo from matrix movie still used other law(before he discovered it he had same reality knowledge everyone else had and got hurt in process) to dodge bullets and face it - that happens only in movie but the game video happens in real life 1:1 and can be easy tested. Mythbusters show on Discovery Channel do this all the time - they take some myth and just test it out and see what happens and most of that stuff ends up with sign "BUSTED". In fact by now we should know one thing - even if we will discover God in future it will definetly be different from what fanatics describe it to be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by baldy3105 View Post
So science lies{...}
Science never lies but humans do and humans does lot of mistakes when doing analysis and translating reality to understandable language but real science itself has never lied. Human science are just limited to acquired knowledge but what we do discover as facts it stays for ever even when we find something else that can overpower previous the previous fact still exists. There was quote which i forgot but it looked like this "Before talking nonsence make sure audience doesn't have real scientist or people who will burst your bubble."

Last edited by Arcane; 07-18-2011 at 07:40 AM. Reason: typo virus
 
Old 07-18-2011, 08:35 AM   #2057
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cascade9 View Post
Humans haven't dealt with germ theory that well. Its been good for medicine, but pretty horrific for lots of normal people. Giving proto-humans, or even early humans germ theory would be like giving a child a gun.
What do you mean by "pretty horrific for lots of normal people"?

I'm having difficulty understanding why proto-humans would have reacted any differently from modern humans to the knowledge of how disease spreads, so they can wash themselves, cook their foods thoroughly, and stop defecating in their water supply. Failure to do this has been pretty horrific for lots of normal people, throughout human history.

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Originally Posted by cascade9 View Post
'All'? Thats a very broad statement to make. The 'religions of the book' dont have much like that (though that is debatable). But they are hardly all the 'divinely-inspired books'. Depending on which translation you read, some of the sanskrit epics read like science fiction.....
If you mean that they don't have much LOLscience, take a look at the two stories of creation, Noah's flood, and the unclean animals (which shows how they didn't know about germ theory, because unless you cook them thoroughly, most of the unclean animals are rife with pathogens, but they interpreted eating them and getting sick as being smited (smote?) by God). There's plenty more: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html

Likewise, the Book of Mormon is packed full of the mistakes Western scholarship had been making about the history of North America for some time, and piled even more errors on top of it.

This pattern repeats itself in every allegedly divinely-inspired work I've ever encountered, so until the thesis is falsified with a reasonable example, I'm pretty comfortable making that broad statement.

As for the sanskrit epics... it'd be helpful if you singled out any relevant epics. But also, we have lots of human-inspired science fiction that ended up predicting new scientific discoveries/inventions to some degree (see Douglas Adams and the internet), so that in itself wouldn't be evidence of divine inspiration.
 
Old 07-18-2011, 08:38 AM   #2058
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcane View Post
One more question i should ask to believers: What God has ever done for us or you in particular since it exists you claim that clearly shows he exists and cares about you and us?
Here comes the selection bias, because anything that ever happened to a person that was good is from God, and every bad thing was just a test, etc. Also, it has been demonstrated that people will remember the one prayer that was "answered" (post hoc, ergo propter hoc) and forget about the 100 others that were not.
 
Old 07-18-2011, 09:24 AM   #2059
theKbStockpiler
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Thought about being Agnostic.

If you are agnostic and don't have information to form a premise to base an axiom from I understand. But how can anyone be agnostic and possess information? Atheist are given the burden to overturn every rock in the universe to prove that God is not hiding under it while believers just sit back and say God is everywhere and Agnostics claim that they don't have enough information to decipher it all. At some point we must make a decision that is based on whether we do believe that there are not deities or otherwise. That is the essence of the "Belief System".
 
Old 07-18-2011, 09:53 AM   #2060
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Quote:
Originally Posted by theKbStockpiler View Post
If you are agnostic and don't have information to form a premise to base an axiom from I understand. But how can anyone be agnostic and possess information? Atheist are given the burden to overturn every rock in the universe to prove that God is not hiding under it while believers just sit back and say God is everywhere and Agnostics claim that they don't have enough information to decipher it all. At some point we must make a decision that is based on whether we do believe that there are not deities or otherwise. That is the essence of the "Belief System".
Incorrect. What is the basis of saying that Atheists or Agnostics posses no or less information about religion(s) than theists?

Ever seen religious people, so called theists turning atheists/agnostics either after no belief system could answer their questions or they got too enlightened(?) for a blindfold following for one belief system?
Think about it for a moment.

Regards.

Last edited by PrinceCruise; 07-18-2011 at 09:58 AM.
 
Old 07-18-2011, 10:35 AM   #2061
sycamorex
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Due to the fact that religion is usually imposed on children, most of us (including myself) were brought up having to attend religious education classes/going to church/etc. When we grow older some people just accept it and get on with their lives being religious 'by tradition.' Some other people find that religion is something that they really need in their lives and expand their religious knowledge. There's also another category of people who at some point start thinking critically about religion, research it in pursuit of some answers and eventually dismiss it as a fairy tale.

I don't have any hard data but from my experience I'd say that the first group is the biggest (people who are religious just because their fathers were religious). At the same time very often it's atheists who, due to the process they've gone through, have the biggest religious knowledge. Obviously, it might be a generalisation, but there was some study in the USA that supports this view:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...than-religious
 
Old 07-18-2011, 10:37 AM   #2062
MensaWater
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I'd suggest Agnostics have more of an open mind than either pure atheists or true believers. Agnostics have plenty of data but know that:
1) The data might suggests several possibilities (including that God exists) but doesn't conclusively "prove" any of those possibilities.
2) It is impossible to prove a negative (i.e. that God does NOT exist) so won't deny he does even if they see no evidence that he does.

The Great Unicorn has spoken!
 
Old 07-18-2011, 10:43 AM   #2063
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MensaWater View Post
I'd suggest Agnostics have more of an open mind than either pure atheists or true believers. Agnostics have plenty of data but know that:
1) The data might suggests several possibilities (including that God exists) but doesn't conclusively "prove" any of those possibilities.
2) It is impossible to prove a negative (i.e. that God does NOT exist) so won't deny he does even if they see no evidence that he does.

The Great Unicorn has spoken!
Once again, the question is not about absolute knowledge, it is about belief. This "pure atheist" straw man is getting tiresome.
 
Old 07-18-2011, 10:49 AM   #2064
dugan
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Agee with SL00B. It's also impossible to prove that dragon's don't exist. That doesn't mean that intellectual honesty requires you to "keep an open mind" about the possible existence of dragons.

The "atheists KNOW WITH CERTAINTLY that God does not exist" position is a strawman that has not been taken by any atheist here.

Last edited by dugan; 07-18-2011 at 11:34 AM.
 
Old 07-18-2011, 10:50 AM   #2065
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Anisha Kaul View Post
What proof is there that it was Allah who made Prophet Mohamed write Quran? If it was Prophet who wrote Quran, it is very much possible that he made it up himself just to gain some publicity!

And nowhere am I claiming that whatever is written in Vedas and Ramayana is 100% true or can be proved someway.

Find time to watch these clips. Answer lot of your (and others) questions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rHK2...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svaMn0aKQXM
 
Old 07-18-2011, 11:21 AM   #2066
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ShaanAli View Post
Find time to watch these clips. Answer lot of your (and others) questions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rHK2...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svaMn0aKQXM
My internet connection is slow and have a limited download quota, so I won't be clicking up those youtube links. You can post here whatever that video has to say.
 
Old 07-18-2011, 11:30 AM   #2067
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sycamorex View Post
Due to the fact that religion is usually imposed on children, most of us (including myself) were brought up having to attend religious education classes/going to church/etc.
I'd say no matter what the case, small children will always ask their parents the big questions of where do we come from, is there a god, etc., and they're going to accept whatever answers their parents provide, and go from there.

My own situation provides an interesting case study, because we don't believe in a god, so that's what we told our daughter, and she is taking it as an article of faith. Her best friend attends a Catholic school. And the two love to argue about it. I find it quite funny, because neither one of them has any validation for their arguments other than it's what people they trust have told them, they're totally inequipped intellectually (they're 6 and 8) to conduct the argument, but that doesn't stop them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sycamorex View Post
When we grow older some people just accept it and get on with their lives being religious 'by tradition.' Some other people find that religion is something that they really need in their lives and expand their religious knowledge. There's also another category of people who at some point start thinking critically about religion, research it in pursuit of some answers and eventually dismiss it as a fairy tale.

I don't have any hard data but from my experience I'd say that the first group is the biggest (people who are religious just because their fathers were religious). At the same time very often it's atheists who, due to the process they've gone through, have the biggest religious knowledge. Obviously, it might be a generalisation, but there was some study in the USA that supports this view:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...than-religious
I think the outcome here largely depends on what a person wants to get out of religion. If the primary motivation is a sense of belonging, community, etc., then there's no reason to question faith, it's all there. If you want to feel like the world makes sense, someone is looking out for you, etc., then you definitely don't want to question faith, you're going to lose everything if you do. Likewise, if your primary motivation is fear... fear of damnation, fear of evil forces... then again, questioning is a non-starter, because it's a realization of those fears.

In my case, I turned to religion as an intellectual pursuit, because I wanted to understand the nature of the universe, where we come from, what's our purpose, etc., and religion claims to have these answers. But the more you pursue these answers, the more you find they're not there. This is where this highly-educated, I-was-religious-but-I-got-better atheist you mentioned comes from.

But you don't necessarily have to be highly-educated. For example, my wife. When I met her, she was thoroughly involved in an extremely evangelical, fundamentalist, cult-like branch of Christianity (google "Boston Movement", they're pretty scary), and she kept causing problems because she'd ask pointed questions about some of the apparent contradictions in their teachings, after mumbling some things that didn't make sense they'd hand her a book, she'd read the book, and it didn't contain any of the answers to the questions she'd just posed, and she had just left them in disgust.

She had never studied science beyond what is taught in high school, and she had never studied religion outside of the context of her church, so she was not highly educated. But she had entered the church for the same reasons as I had, which was to make some sense of the world. So when she brought her questions to me, I was able to share some of the encyclopedic knowledge I'd acquired in my own search for answers, and while science doesn't pretend to hold all the answers, at least the ones that begin, "We're not really sure, but this is our best guess based on current knowledge," were honest, coherent, and made sense.

So yeah, she's still not what you'd call an educated atheist, since it only took a single conversation of maybe an hour or two to "unconvert" her, so yeah, she's an exception to your generalization.

Mostly, I'd say an atheist in America is so much more likely to be educated on science and religion because America is such a huge echo chamber for religion, and Christianity in particular, permeating everything in society, that it's only through education that you can break out of the echo chamber. Since I've already broken through the echo chamber for her, I don't think my child will necessarily have to find Zoroastrian origins for Christian beliefs to make sense of the world. She can still study it if she likes, but the urgency is gone.

I remember a man I met at a religious debate once, who said he'd been brought up in an atheist family. He didn't understand what all the fuss was about. I think it's atheists who have been in a religious family who understand the harm that can come from it. There's a lot of psychological baggage that comes along for the ride.
 
Old 07-18-2011, 12:16 PM   #2068
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Quote:
My own situation provides an interesting case study, because we don't believe in a god, so that's what we told our daughter
I don't have children but I talked to some of my atheist/agnostic friends. Some of them still decided to raise the children in some kind of 'faith'. They did it for fear of alienating and potentially exposing their loved ones to bullying at school. I'm not sure that was the right choice, but then again, it's their business how they want to raise their children.
Quote:
But you don't necessarily have to be highly-educated. For example, my wife. When I met her, she was thoroughly involved in an extremely evangelical, fundamentalist, cult-like branch of Christianity (google "Boston Movement", they're pretty scary), and she kept causing problems because she'd ask pointed questions about some of the apparent contradictions in their teachings, after mumbling some things that didn't make sense they'd hand her a book, she'd read the book, and it didn't contain any of the answers to the questions she'd just posed, and she had just left them in disgust.
Of course being highly educated doesn't automatically implies atheism. It would be a big overgeneralisation to claim that. It would be hard to research it as I guess it may differ across the countries. Again from my experience (looking at people I've met in my life), the rule of thumb would be the higher education a person has, the more likely they are to be an atheist/agnostic.

My point in the previous post wasn't actually about education in general. It was merely about the fact that ironically atheists tend to know more about religion than a big percentage of religious people. Most of religious people I know don't think about their believes. They inherited them from their parents and are most likely to pass them on to their children. They are happy like that so I don't have a problem with that. My point is that sometimes they might not know much about what they actually believe in. Once I discussed religion with one of my religious colleagues. It was clear that he hadn't really thought about or let alone openly discussed his beliefs before. When I asked him some questions, he got a bit upset and replied something along the lines: "My father believed in God, his father believed in God. If it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me. Who are you to question the faith of my ancestors?!" I didn't mean to upset him because normally it's a very nice person. It was clear that he really knew very little about the bible and christianity. Obviously, faith is not a competition who can recite a bigger part of the bible, but if I were a believer, I'd definitely research what my holy book says.

<lol>On a LESS serious note, perhaps some believers aren't keen on reading the bible because if they actually read what stories it contains, they'd have no choice but to abandon the faith.</lol>
 
Old 07-18-2011, 12:56 PM   #2069
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sycamorex View Post
<lol>On a LESS serious note, perhaps some believers aren't keen on reading the bible because if they actually read what stories it contains, they'd have no choice but to abandon the faith.</lol>
"Many a true word is spoken in jest"
~someone or other
 
Old 07-18-2011, 01:08 PM   #2070
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The poem about the monkeys was not intended as a serious argument. Rather as a rather silly one. In fact this whole discussion is rather silly. You all seem to be experts on both "Science" and the "holy books". I was once an expert on science and the constitution of the United states - when I was 10! I well remember winning lot's of arguments I (in my own mind at least) with such statements as "Science says...." or "You can't do that! it's against the constitution!" Pretty silly - don't you think?

That's why - even though I believe the Bible (all of it), I'm not even trying to persuade you merely on the basis of what it says. To be persuaded on that basis would take a very long and dedicated study - one which few of you would embark upon unless you were already more than half persuaded.

Sometimes you hit on a really cogent point: for instance:

from Arcane:
"...One more question i should ask to believers: What God has ever done for us or you in particular since it exists you claim that clearly shows he exists and cares about you and us?..."

Well, I could tell you a very great deal of what God has done for all of us, and/or for me personally, but the former- you already know if you are not so foolish as to think that all of this near perfect balance that allows life to even exist on this planet is just an accident. And the latter you may reject because you have already rejected so much in your own personal experience that could have demonstrated to you the presence and power of a loving God in your own life.

But I'll tell you of only one small experience in my own life that thoroughly convinced me at about the age of ten that God not only exists, but is intensely interested in me personally.

I had a gift: a brand new bow (15 pound test) with three straight arrows - metal tipped with feathers glued to the back end of them to make them fly straight. I seldom used the straight arrows, because I didn't want to loose them, and I often missed the target. So I made crude arrows from willow sticks that grew near the river. But now and then I'd get out the straight ones, and practice with a bail of hay as a target. And nearly always, I'd miss the bail of hay and loose an arrow.

Then I'd hunt, and hunt, and hunt. First time it happened, after an hour or two of hunting (that seemed much longer) it occurred to me that God was in a position to see where that arrow was, By this time I was frustrated to the point of tears. So I tearfully ask God for help ion finding that wayword arrow. - And found it in short order!

Over the course of that summer, this exact scenario occurred with me several times - until at last I weighed it up in my childish mind, and recognized that this could not be mere coincidence. God in fact was listening to my prayers, and answering. He was paying attention to the simple prayers of a child about a toy!

From that day to this, He has heard and answered hundreds of my prayers - clearly not all. He is to wise and to kind for that. But in 60 plus years, he continues to demonstrate His personal interest in my life, and in the lives of many others whom I have watched take their first "baby steps" in this life of faith, and then continue to grow in faith.

Arcane also says:
..."Science never lies but humans do..." You are right, Arcane! What you say is akin to the statement: "Figures don't lie, but liars figure."
 
  


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