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This is the
Kill Em
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PLEASE MAKE
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This is the
Kill Em
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RULES
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
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This is the
Kill Em
With
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PLEASE MAKE
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I asked someone in my church once. And he told me that the Bible contains truths that seem to be disputed by knowledge, but they could actually be combined with God's logic. There are also things that he thinks God told the people in a way they could understand.
The argument only goes for genesis and the flood, of course. It doesn't explain how the Bible is still true when it's just a combination of all sorts of myths. But most Christians don't know about that...
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
Well, there are a couple of threads around here where theists have posted the canard “list of religious scientists”.
Generally, it takes the form of a list of people who were alive before about 1850 or so, which always leaves me saying “I see what you did there”.
When it comes up, there is another list of scientists who were/are theists who lived past that point. I really don't want to have to google it again but I might later if it becomes needed.
Basically, the list has lots of theist scientists including some of the men who worked on nuclear weapons, particle physicists and even the director of the human genome project.
So yah, it is certainly possible.
=
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
Yea, that doesn't happen in a vacuum.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
It's well understood that humans can hold 2 or more completely incompatible thoughts, or beliefs. It's been studied a lot.
One place it's easy observed is in people who indulge in Astrology.
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
I used to be a Christian, and in the early stages of my doubt, I often rationalized. Essentially, I accepted scientific evidence, but had to make God fit in somehow ("God guides evolution" and other such nonsense).
Back when I was a Christian it was simply that the bible could be wrong while God might still exist. I had had a religious experience, one not brought in from any kind of revival meeting or pushy preacher and I knew the feeling and hadn't felt it outside of that time so I couldn't really compare it to anything and it happened after a lot of introspection. Long story short I just figured that the bible could be wrong about things, I kind of saw god in the deist model but where he might occaisonally look at his clock and fiddle with the gears when he felt it would improve things, that was more or less my thought on the subject.
Ramachandran in a study of split brain cases exampled a woman whose right brain loved a dress but the left brain hated the dress she was looking at during shopping. He also told of a case in which the right brain of a man believed in god but the left side did not. The joke was does ponly the right side go to heaven and the left side to hell. The complexiity as to what the mind and consciousness is is such that we are apt to have complete or very close to complete functional models of beliefs (possible worlds)that are tapped into without conscious access to function or play a role inresponse to a context. We go from being an attorney during the day to a parent at night with some demanding kids. Sometimes the mutally exclusive roles are not so exclusive and we wind up deposing our children by being on auto-pilot instead of switching software to parenting uniti 101. In a Harvard study a group of students were force fed Tetrus for hours upon hours. The reinforced behavior actually created a specialized modeling in the brain/mind such that as they went outside they responded to brick walls with a desire to alter the popping out patterns within the bricks. A similar experiment upon these students with Grand Theft Auto had one majorplayer leaving after an all nighter complusively walking up to a police car outdside the facility and grabbing the door to open it. Semi-counscious excitement dialogue come forth in which he planned on stealing the actual car. His 'switch" to the actual world was the fact that the police officer iin the driver's seat looked directly at him requiring him to interprete his own behavior in its actual unigue context and rejecting his auto-pilot model. We probabbly have at any given time a thesis an antithesis and a synthesis of many world views going on with the rejected ones nontheless feeding into the accepted and used one. An atheist still is being fed from some unconscious mental construct a theistic model to reject when he/she gives propositional statements about the lack of god. To some it up. We got one grand fricking brain and no telling how many minds or subset minds.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
So I see it this way. You can believe in God, you can NOT believe in God, or you can not care. So atheists fall in the belief "AGAINST" category or the not care "IGNORANT" category. I like to see an atheist stand up firmly and is willing to die for his belief "AGAINST". I mean come on... I came here to see some real debate! Bring all the scientific facts up and what you got and PROVE yourself, preferably by logic. Your so-called "dumb religious folks" are actually very convincing. Most of them can explain to you each part of their religion and how it fits in our rational world. Very disappointed in you wimpy atheists to say the least.
Welcome to the forum.
I don't believe in God. I don't know what belief "against" means.
Being willing to die for your beliefs has nothing to do with whether or not they are true.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
This ought to be good...
So far, so good.
But you people never seem to be able to go far, without a logical fallacy, or complete non sequitur.
Let's recap:
1- You can believe in God
2- you can NOT believe in God
3- or you can not care
Ummm, which 1 of the 3 positions is that 1?
Well, make a cogent argument, and you might see one...
We're not under any obligation to justify being skeptical of mythology, mysticism, and delusional claims that cannot be verified.
Hundreds of millions of people have evolved far past granting people their 'beliefs' of supernatural phenomena.
How could they be?
That's not logically possible.
No one has ever witnessed a universe forming.
If you're lucky, you'll come to realize how nonsensical your position really is.
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
Drop in with a handful of nothing assertions and disappear for all time. As for the dumb religious folks being very convincing, well. This is another fine instance of the Dunning-Kruger effect at work.
Just forget trying to prove god by 'logic', for a start.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
definitely believe in science. They simply compartmentalise and generalise and avoid evidence that unseats their unfounded and unproven beliefs. No christian member of my family believes in evolution. In place of millions of fossils of intermediate and extinct creatures they focus directly on what is not known and shove this broomstick in the spokes of science.
Until these monkey children see evolution in their own living rooms they will not accept the possibility of it. They don't want to believe it and so they build a view that walls out scientific possibility. Ignoring fossils in DNA they scoff at the integrity of Darwin's open questions, at his refusal to insist he knew, at his confession that much was left to the researchers of later generations. They offer tripe about the death of his daughter. They talk about microevolution, ignoring the fact it's a bundled solution.
Many god people are engineers, however. They certainly embrace scientific fundamentals when it suits them but without certainties about abiogenesis and in the presence of our short term conceptions about reality and who we are and why we feel and behave the way we do, they cling to the 'certainties' of the naked assertions of ancient religion.
Science is a discipline that refuses to make assertions. For many people the idea of not knowing is not an option they are strong enough to bear.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I once worked with a science teacher that was also a hard core Adventist. I asked him if he believes prayer can cause people to be healed of disease, he said yes. So I told him you teach students the scientific method, double blind studies, etc... Why don't we do a double blind study to find out how much pray actually works, which prayers from which denomination actually work.
I caught him quite offguard, he never thought about doing this even though he teaches this to students. He was able to compartmentalize to different versions of reality in his head. He has one reality for teaching science another when in church or talking religion. He wasn't able to resolve the conflict I brought up in his two versions of reality. I finally concluded that he knows his religion is BS because he didn't want to do the experiments.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Religion and knowledge aren't as mutually exclusive as popular media today suggests. A person, unless they are on the extreme fringes of society, is going to want to know how things work, how to better their lives through technology or, in some cases, "enlightenment".
And yes, this doesn't prevent them from working in science. It doesn't even prevent them from working in biological fields and making meaningful contributions, like "dominant (heredity)" and "recessive (heredity)".
The only thing religion, or more specifically, Christianity can make a barrier for is a field of knowledge that studies changes over gargantuan, prehistoric expanses of time.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Seeing how a theist accepts their religion as omniscience would there be any need for a theist to be a scientist? They would only need to engage in as much science as was needed to prove their omniscience against a skeptically scientist. Once they created a reasonable doubt they could sit back and wait.
Christianity has put up many barriers over many fields of science. I'm defining "barrier" as not only an impediment in learning but also as a way to prevent modern application of accrued knowledge. Vaccinations being one that comes to mind readily. Another simple scientific approach that was adamantly refuted by Christianity is proposed contraceptive prophylactics as a way to alleviate over-population with its resultant shortages. I'm willing to venture that this list could go on an on.
Seeing how a theist accept their religion as omniscient would there be any need for a theist to be a scientist?
KORAN, n.
A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures. ~ The Devil's Dictionary
Defining a personal choice as a barrier is asinine. Organic food proponents don't eat food produced with fertilizers, insecticides, antibiotics, or artificial hormones. By your definition, they are rejecting the "modern application of knowledge", except they aren't.
There are a few who want to force a particular choice on others, in which case they are fundamentalists. Fundamentalists reject lots of knowledge.
I've yet to even hear of anyone who pronounces their religion as omniscient. Who said anything about need? How... does that even fit into this thread?
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Believing that their God is omniscient does not transfer any of that knowledge to the believer.
While it does imply, to them, that 'knowledge' gained from scripture is sound, any honest believer will acknowledge that the Bible does not contain all knowledge, so they still need to search elsewhere IF they want more knowledge than is contained in their book.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology