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PLEASE MAKE
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This is the
Kill Em
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PLEASE MAKE
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This is the
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PLEASE MAKE
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Welcome to the forums, synthlord!
We'd like to get to know you a little better. When you get a minute, we'd love it if you'd hop over to the General Conversation, Introductions and Humor forum and introduce yourself.
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server.
Here's a list:
1. Memes (mind viruses)
2. Nothing else
Though I vacillate between whether religion "discovered" or "created" memes; perhaps, both in a parasitic, symbiotic way with its human hosts.
Crocoduck - A missing transitional link that theists have been hoping does not exist...
Well I wouldnt say religion...however the Bible proved something for me. It proved that it could remove my sexual addiction overnight after 8 years of Dr's and myself failed to do so. Is that something that I can prove to you? Not really, unless you are someone who is a part of my life or just want to believe me. But it was proof to many people in my life as well as myself. And it proved positively to me that following Jesus has a very real purpose which has absolutly nothing to do with science, how men got here, how the earth was formed or anything else. All of those topics are not really touched on in the Bible because they are not the point. The point of the Bible is healing your internal self so that you can live a life that is pleasing to God. If you dont believe in God, that is ok....God made it a thing of personal choice and who am I to take that away from you!
That would be like saying just because science cant explain something that it doesnt exist. Before there was a definition of air people still knew something was going into their nose.
You believe things based on experience no matter if you can define it or not. You cant define it but you know its real because you experience it. When you believe something that you have not experienced (such as evolution) you are only accepting information and as soon as science changes the information your belief changes with it. Because you dont really believe you are actually just accepting information. If you truely believed it and knew it was right then when science changed it stance on something you wouldnt change, you would keep sticking with the old theory.
This carries over with the concept of God, you can never believe it unless you try it on the terms that Jesus lays out and personally experience something. If there was a definition of God you would only be accepting information and it still wouldnt lead to belief unless you tried it out and experienced it. This is the position that most Christians are in, they think they are saved based on a ritual like baptism and so they never implementined Jesus' teachings to experienced it, they just accept information they hear and misstake it for belief. That is why there is no passion and no noticeable difference in them. Like you mentioned from a moral standpoint many athiests are doing better. The reason? Because so many Christians have been unbliblically lead to believe they are "saved" therefor they have no need to change. The athiest however is trying to live a good life because they believe its the only one they have. Your belief is pushing you to be all you can, where as the modern day churches are just justifying people and giving them a message that they dont need to change. But what this really boils down to is that most "Christians" arent really Christians at all.
Why... would you want to do something like that?
But we use science to determine what is right or wrong.
I do not 'believe' that E=mc^2, I know it is.
You are confusing belief and knowledge.
It was destroying my marriage and my life in general and had been doing so for years. It was a huge life change for me to no longer have girl friends, volumes of porn, sex toys, ect all which were overwhelmingly stealing my focus from what was important in my life and destroying everything which was truely healthy. My life is sooooo much better now, less stress, less worry, less depression, less frustration, dont have to worry about girl friends, being seen in public, ect, ect, ect. I could go on forever man. It was something I battled with for years and tried so hard many many times to stop but just never could. I might try to stop for a few days then a porn site or girl or whatever would start calling and I would be all back in it. It was to the point that I hadnt had control over it in years.
Stephen
CPT Pineapple
Well not really, Im saying its more feasable to have belief based on personal experience than knowledge. Even if you didnt know the definition of air you knew you were breathing something into your nose and that you needed too or else you would pass out. You would know that under water you cant breath in whatever it is you breath. Even in spite of the lack of defined knowledge you would still believe because of the experience, you know it is there, you just have no actual definition.
And if you had the definition of air but you were a fish that didnt breath air it wouldnt be something you could put your faith into anyway. Just like if the top scientist and mathematician in the world disproved E=MC because of this and this and this and the rest of the science community agreed then you would also change your thought process according to this new information.
I guess what I am saying is that we truely believe based on personal experience....we accept information as knowledge....but knowledge isnt truely believing 100%...its just accepting what we are told.
I didnt think I would but suprisingly Im enjoying this board, a lot of thinkers in here!
Stephen
The point I am making is that we use science to determine our view, because I think knowledge is more fullfilling that belief.
The purpose of the universe is to advance our knowledge.
Consider this quote:
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.... Whosoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed ~Albert Einstein
And look at Hammby's topic:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/yellow_number_five/science/10290
I think that advancing our knowledge is much more satistfactory than just simply 'believing.'
Air has properties we can test. Blow out a candle, fill a balloon, put a rat in a bell jar.
A subjective experience can be mistaken. We still say "the sun rises" because it's counterintuitive to grasp, since we don't feel it, that the earth is moving thousands of miles per hour in an orbit around a star. But data from telescopes and maths tell us the counterintuitive truth.
There's nothing "real" in the human experience in any ultimate sense. We have organs that create a working model of the world, but it's limited and deceptive. We're capable of experiencing things that aren't real, and not experiencing things that are, which is why we use methods, and repetition in testing, and third parties to test the credibility of an idea.
You imply that evolution is meant to answer some existential question. It's a scientific theory with specific uses; it's got nothing to do with most of our daily lives, unless we're in a field that requires it.
Faith is just accepting, science scrutinizing.
Science changes based on new data. If the off ramp is unexpectedly blocked on a highway, do you plow through it on principle? To stretch the analogy a bit further: we could use the observation of road conditions like the slowing of traffic, people merging, construction signs, work lights, etc., to predict that a lane is closing ahead. We can use available information, as it comes to us, to make a prediction. We drove without that knowledge down one stretch, and then incorporated new information as we went on.
What's your definition of "trying it?" Generally, I hear you have to start believing to get the "evidence" you no longer need because you chose believe already.
If you kick out people who don't know what they believe... not a bad idea, really.
Some are, yes.
Not scripturally-informed ones in any case. I look at religion like language, though. It's not like the major ones came about through evidence or data. The new ones are what the old ones were: groups of people agreeing on something.
I dont know, I was say that God is the epitome of mysterious. I believe because of experience that showed me he is real. Much like anything in science. We experience something so we know its real and then we investigate it and try to gain knowledge about it. We experience air so that leads us on a quest to learn more about it. We see the effects of a new medical disease so we know its real and that leads us to learn about it.
We dont form out belief about something being real from the knowledge....it is the experience of it that drives us to find the knowledge. On occasion we just stumble on something but the vast majority of the time research is done on something we know is real but we dont understand it or have real knowledge of it. In the case of science they then pass that information along to others but you dont really believe it you just accept it. That is why you will keep reaccepting it as the scientist change it. This is the same in religion, most people are just accepting what they are told and just creating a vaccuum devoid of purpose because they never implement and experience thus then they go out into the world and missinform people and smart people such as yourself know they are a crock.
Anyway, dont get me wrong I understand the need to want things to be tangable, I was once there and in reality to me it is now tangable in my life. But it was after i had real experiences that I formed a true belief and started identifying how in reality most things even in science have to start with some form of experience. No matter if its just something we precieve or smell or can touch or can see or can just see the results of its existance. That latter one is much like God, I can experience the results of His existance in myself and my life thus I know He is real. Can I define Him for you guys? Not really, I just dont have the knowledge to do so much like the many things that are we cant fully explain and define in science but we still know they are there based on the results of them.
I honestly wish I could give you a jar filled with God and say here it is right here. Let you measure it, ect. I wish I could let you inside my body so you could experience what I experience that leads me to belief and you could feel more secure about trusting it. All I can do is just show people love and hope that at some point you can see something different about me and it lead you on a path to truely try it out for yourself and look for that experience that will cement it in your heart and mind.
Stephen
Some of you guys seem to be comparing science to religion in the sense that they are the same or that you have to pick one over the other. Im just comparing them to try and give an example that you can relate to. Im trying to show you how I can believe and know something exists eventhough I cant define it. Just like science knows certain things exist eventhough they dont have the full knowledge to explain and define it. But that is where the comparison stops because in reality they are two different things.
The purpose of the Bible was not to be a science book. It wasnt to explain the creation of the world, ect. To explain in full detail the creation of the universe would take massive volumes of books and thus it would cause people to loose the focus of the purpose which is how to help us identify how God wants us to live. If the Bible gave full detailed descriptions of how creation was formed, how the body works, how nature works, how the spirit deminsion works, how the universe works ect, ect then readers would loose their focus of its purpose. Even now as it is most people read the Bible and get distracted into creating a religious organization full of doctrine instead of creating changed people. If it had anymore off subject content than it already does it would be completely useless at helping people with their internal self and how to live for God.
So I guess my point is that just because people see 80 verses regarding the creation of humanity they feel like they have to choose between science and God. My point is that there are over 31,000 total versus in the Bible and the fact that only 80 touch on the beginning of humanity should show that it is that way because it wasnt the point of the Bible. You guys know how science is, to explain this means you have to understand this for it to make sense which means you have to understand this and this and this....you cant explain some without explaining all. And to explain all you would loose the focus of the purpose.
Similarly, did Noahs flood happen exacly as described? Maybe, I wasnt there to experience it. It could be that to fully explain would have taken volumes of books, so in order to not loose the point of the story it was told as a summary. The point of the story wasnt the actual flood itself but rather to identify what does and does not please God.
The Bible isnt a science book and one doesnt disprove the other because the Bible isnt about science. It has a specific purpose which is to help people identify how to live for God and thats all its about.
Stephen
It's easy to say now that it is evident it doesn't.
So the short, but fumbling and still wrong, account of creation (and other claims about the physical world) is in there, why? People didn't used to think in terms of other dimensions; they assumed heaven and hell were represented in this dimension. It's only now that we've got photos of the earth from space, and photos of space, and didn't find any of that, that we're forced to add to the list another thing a religious concept isn't.
I see religion as a distraction from living.
The brevity doesn't alter the falsehoods. If I told someone the light in the fridge came on because a little man who lives in there turns it on when you open the door, this isn't a condensed version of the real explanation.
Maybe? Did you read it? Two of every animal on earth? Noah travelled to every continent scooping up hundreds of thousands of species of insect, elephants, moose, Tasmanian devils, etc., and took care of them on a big boat with one tiny window? Then, the genocidal deity's all like, "My bad, here's a rainbow to remind myself not to kill everyone again." Not to mention the supposed timeline given by creationists overlaps several civilizations that went completely uninterrupted by the global catastrophe.
All that stuff is in there for a reason. Think about the time it came from, about a people ravaged by fear of death and disease. They were so desperate for answers, any would do. Anyone who could tell people they know what's going on, and that everything would be alright in the end, and that vengeance would be theirs, would have an audience. And they did.
I said it was a brief description. It would be the equivelent of you saying....because there is a light switch in the refrigerator as opposed to saying what kind of bulb, the electrical diagram, picture of the switch, how it works, where the parts were created at, then so that it makes sense explaining how electricity works, how the light bulb works, explaining the fuse panel, the power supply in great detail, how the mechanical properties of how a door moves a switch, ect, ect. The point is that the Bible just says God did it, he doesnt offer the information on how. It would distract from the purpose which is a lesson.
As for Noah, who knows....it wouldnt suprise me if all of the land mass was connected prior to the flood as one large contenent. Who knows for certain, the best we can do is give theories. On a side note, if you are ever interested to read more about the flood of Noah there is a scriptue called the Book of Enoch which is not in the Bible however there are referances of it in the Bible. In the New Testament Book of Jude he referances a quote from the Book of Enoch. That book goes into much more information regarding pre flood days, the purpose of the flood, ect. And it says that there were certain survivors after the flood besides the ones with Noah. That being said, for me the flood isnt the point so its irrelevant, it doesnt matter to me if it was regional, global, all one continent prior, ect, ect, ect. Like all of the OT stories, we were supposed to draw out the meaning of them regarding what it was saying on how to live for God. Which this is basically what Jesus taught....the lessons of the OT.
Stephen
There are two problems with that comparison. The first one is thinking the answer "god did it," because it's a simplistic answer, implies something less complicated than a naturalistic answer. I'd have a lot more questions about the little man in the fridge than I would about a switch, a power source, and a lamp. But even if the latter answer is too complicated, the way to simplify it isn't anthropomorphizing the process. Anything anthropomorphic is going to be more complicated because you've got this sentient being whose motives you have to guess at.
The second problem is that the biblical answers, though simplistic, still don't describe anything. A small child can grasp a basic astronomy that says the earth is in space orbiting the sun, the moon is orbiting the earth, etc. The bible portrays an alternate model for this, and other things, which is simply wrong. There isn't a simple answer where water in the sky, or tiny stars set into the surface of a dome can be reconciled with reality.
Either geologists are grossly mistaken in their timelines, or Noah lived 250 million years ago, before the continents separated. You don't just find the big flood story in the bible and apocrypha, you find it in older myths from other religions. Todd Gates has a video about it evolving from an old polytheistic myth, which seems a bit less schizo than Yahweh killing everyone, then feeling bad about it.
And if morality is the point of the bible, there are much older, better, and more coherent philosophies developed independent of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic ones. Ones that don't demand submission, or the negation of life, devaluation of the material world, of repayment of invented debts like original sin. The fact is, human history screams the fact that every culture will develop an independent moral principle. Christianity doesn't tell us anything we don't know.
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert