Religion

[Mykey]

To speak on this theme it is possible long.

[Nalaris]

That book is a truckload of nonsense literally written by a guy on drugs (or, at least, the original one was). That excerpt, however, is a gem.

Words do have precise meanings: what the dictionairy writers think of as their meanings. However, this is not a required universal view, and because it's not particularly important, people don't mind if the definitions fluctuate. In this way, words don't have definite meaning. I'm not sure how much sense that made to all of you, but to me it makes plenty (which probably proves my point).

Now, as to rationality and faith, I have the rational, logical reasoning that the Big Bang could not have occured on its own, at random, and never have happened again in nearly fourteen billion years. It's also rational to believe in the possibility of a being with control over the strings of the string theory (or whatever other unifying theory happens to be correct) controlling every event in the universe by manipulating them. It's also rational to believe in such a power once it has been made manifest to you in the form of the Holy Ghost (which I feel now at almost every church meeting I attend) and in the form of strangely benevolent twists of fate which can be defined as miracles(for example, Utah, after four or five years solid of drought, was suddenly deluged with rain, giving Utah a sizable excess, or the many stories of various church members being saved from some form of grim fate (and sometimes an untimely end) by the timely arrival of a benevolent stranger, or the warnings of the Holy Ghost. I'm actually fairly certain that similar things happen to people of every faith (including atheists, who have faith in nothing (not as in not having faith, but as in having faith in nothingness itself)), but they seem to employ the Holy Ghost's warnings far more frequently in the Mormon Church. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me)(Alright, I think I got out of all the parantheses). Also, natural disasters seem targeted at the wicked places of the world, for example, several countries in Indonesia and Malaysia have become the centers of the world for the modern slave trade, and they got hit by a tsunami. Further, New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina, hard, and it is home to the infamous Marti Gras(sp?).

All of the above leads me to believe that God is very real. This conclusion, as well as Gods apparent benevolence (at least, to those who are generally righteous), leads me to believe that he is trustworthy, and I have therefore have faith in his word.

Furthermore, as I have pointed out earlier, not one of Gods miracles is unexplainable (to my knowledge) assuming he knows us all perfectly well and has control over the strings and the eleven dimensions.

As usual, feel free to correct me.[/i]

[Mykey]

This topic is simply matchless

[Mykey]

It is remarkable, very useful idea

[Nosajimiki]

New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina, hard, and it is home to the infamous Marti Gras(sp?)

Your right New Orleans was hit by Hurrican Katrina but if you think that this was the work of someone with 11 demensional expertesse, he would have atleast been smart enough to know that if the eye landed another 50 miles West the cross current would have properly pushed the lake over into the city and destroyed the place compleatly, Katrina didn't stop a single "evil" Mardigras.

Instead of destroying the criminal culture of New Orleans like you might believe it did, it is now spread to previously much more peaceful nieghboring towns such as Covingtion, Hammond, Batton Rouge, etc. All the shit you see on TV is nothing like what is really happening here still.

FYI:
My blinding mother was living in New Orleans, she is a very faithful woman, now every thing she had is gone, and she would have likely drownd if not for my brother staying there with her. My dad? lost his job, now he's working 12-16 hours a day just trying to keep up with his depts. He is a very religious man too, gives to charities wether he can afford it or not, so on so forth. My Sister: lost her apartment, her car, her buisness, and all of her matterial possesions being left without enough money to even get back to Lousiana after she evacuated, she is a spiritual person and loving mother. Me? I'm the athiest son without a care for God who lost nothing. You might think that that storm was targeted at evil and faithlessness, but it was a STORM! not a sniper riffle. It caused sensless random destruction killing and ruining far mor inocient and hard working people than you might imagine.

Now I'm pretty good about not lossing my tempor on these forums but ...

FUCK, YOU.

[Pie]

Oh my oh my.

God may not do everything, but he does do something. Were you watching that secont huricane that came apon New Orleans that one time? It was coming in full blast, with red colors and everything, then it just turned less red, all in an instant. Do you know what the meteorologists say what happened? A puff (or something) of warm air... or a high thingy, came frome texas and slowd the huricane down. Do you know how common that is? it's not a once in a year thing. Not a once in a decade. Not a once in a century. A once in a melenia thing happened RIGHT there.

Correct me if I'm rong, But that ^ is a pretty cool thing that happened.

Now, let me ask you something. When your driving your car, in a thunderstorm, and a tree just falls over suddenly, do you instantly think that it was some sort of evil gremlin or an angel with a flaming sword behind that tree pushing it over? No. You go to a logical thing, such as termites weakend it and the increased wind just pushed it over the edge (literally).

And we can blame katrina on many differen't things. Perhaps it was the decreasing of the rainforest. or global warming. or something of the sort. But wat we can't blame anything on, is that little puff of hot air that came from texas.

Now conserning rationality of the bible... again, must I go over the life of jesus?

and NO Diego, the bible isn't the soal source of the story of jesus. We have enough evidence, that heck, I've watched those crime shows were people were convicted for less. We have something proving the life and death and justification of jesus. sure it's only 3 small points, But a single case can be turned one way or another by one testimony. ONE cingle testimony. (and gues what? WE HAVE 3)

Now pleas, shut up, or stop mud slinging.

[Diego]

Pie, you have (exceedingly poor) evidence of the existance of Jesus. However, those sources only say that Jesus existed, and, at most, led a cult of Jews. Anything else about miracles, philosophy, magic, rebirth and such is wholly unsupported anywhere but the Bible, which is not a historical source on its own.

And Pie, written testimonies have no validity anywhere if they are written by different individuals decades after the events and then translated multiple times, the originals long-lost, and then edited here and there to a point where hundreds of different versions exist.

[Pie]

The myrterdome of the apostles.

As the oldest little scrap of a vers of the bible is frome like 100 A.D. And since we all know how off carbon dating(doubt it was used, but archeological evidence and the depth of the object frome ground levle can also be way way off) can be, we really don't know now do we?

and there are all the other historical's mentioning the apostles myrterdome (I can name one of the top of my head...) and you must remember that there entyer lives were chock full of myrterdome. being a poor traveling apostle dosen't pay verry well aparantly.

[Diego]

It wouldn't be the first time people drink the Kool-Aid, Pie.

Besides, it does not prove anything. First of all, logically, it is much more sensible to assume the entire Twelve were collectively insane (a known, feasible, documented medical condition), rather than to assume the possibility and existance of inexplicable supernatural powers and events. Ockham's Razor, Pie. Shave off the more complex assumptions--and assuming that the basic laws of the Universe make exceptions that we can't predict, measure or experiment with is the biggest assumption one can make.

On the other hand, and, let's just get crazy here for a sec--what if the Apostles preached, say, that Jesus was a man who spoke for peace and love and India-inspired hippy movements who did nothing special or remarkable whatsoever except get killed for leading a dangerous cult, then they were killed for the same reason, then Constantine the Great made up the bullshit to fill in the gaps and create a religion to control his population with? Do keep in mind that we know of hundreds of gospels, several of which were written by people close to Jesus (why the fuck do we care about Luke's gospel? HE WAS NEVER THERE.) and many of which did not mention Jesus as being a god or Messianic figure.

What if they just made it up. Goddamnit, Pie, you're living up to your reputation.

[Pie]

And as are you.

If we use the razor, I think it is much more consiveable that god just created the univers in 7 days than this whole 13 billion, whatever.

aaaaand, the razor is used for theories. I'm using the evidence that they would use in the courts and the like. Becaus science can only figure out the certains in life, philisophically it comes out blank, and theoretically wins, IF this wins.

AND, we have the writings of all the popes and them cardinals, and we can reconfigure all the gosples, and the age of the writings is around... 150, 200 A.D.?

and the first little scrap of the new testimant we have is of Jhon, so we should assume that Jhon was made first, and thus more reliable. becaus as we all know, [partly sarcastic]the human memory is succomable to forgetting.[/partly sarcastic]

[Diego]

And as are you.

I have no reputation. What the hell are you talking about? I'm new here.

If we use the razor, I think it is much more consiveable that god just created the univers in 7 days than this whole 13 billion, whatever.

You may think that, sure, but the whole 13 billion year explanation is drawn exclusively from what we can see, observe, measure, repeat and conclude from the world around us. It uses no elements not readily available in this Universe.

God is the biggest assumption you can ever make, because, no matter how far-fetched, it is always more simple to assume any highly-complex theory using only the elements in the system rather than to assume an outside element that is impossible to observe, measure or predict, doing whatever the hell we can't explain.

Basically, you have a dead man inside a locked room. There's a bloody knife in his chest, and an extremely complex set of pulleys, one such that it was possible for a regular knife to be picked up and moved around and then thrown to his chest fatally, but the chance was one in a million.

You're trying to tell me that it's simpler to assume a psychic moved it from across the world. That's just downright stupid.

aaaaand, the razor is used for theories.

No, the razor is used for logical lines of thought.

I'm using the evidence that they would use in the courts and the like. Becaus science can only figure out the certains in life, philisophically it comes out blank, and theoretically wins, IF this wins.

I have no idea of what you said. It sounds like it didn't matter, so I'll go with that.

AND, we have the writings of all the popes and them cardinals, and we can reconfigure all the gosples, and the age of the writings is around... 150, 200 A.D.?

Again, I don't know what you are trying to say here. I'll hope it wasn't important.

and the first little scrap of the new testimant we have is of Jhon, so we should assume that Jhon was made first, and thus more reliable. becaus as we all know, [partly sarcastic]the human memory is succomable to forgetting.[/partly sarcastic]

Succomable indeed. However, this still doesn't answer any of my questions. Your cop-out of martyrdome as an excuse for absolute validity is still bullshit, Pie, you're just pointing elsewhere in vastly incoherent ways.

Try again?

[Pie]

Succomable indeed. However, this still doesn't answer any of my questions. Your cop-out of martyrdome as an excuse for absolute validity is still bullshit, Pie, you're just pointing elsewhere in vastly incoherent ways.

THAT reputation, diego.

We cant

see, observe, measure, repeat and conclude

evolution. In fact, I don't see any evolution in the fossle records at all.
All I see is small little jumps that happen at sertain times. No gradual movenment, just all these big jumps.

we can't

see, observe, measure, repeat and conclude

the big bang, we can only theorise.

watch on the beatch(creation of the world), the tide going in and out(evolution and the like), and a note saying "bob made this"(religion) and this watch can also talk, and it says that bob made him (Jesus)

You see, as sherlock holms sais, "if you reason out all the other posobilities, than the final one, no-mater how unreasonable, is the thing that happened"

BECAUS, like it or not, and compleatly contradictal to that razor thing, complex things do happen, even when there is a less complex thing standing right there in your face.(such as, the girl with the gun was framed by so and so who did what and what wich triggerd this and that wich did what and thus happened and then she grabbed it, against-the girl killed the man.)

and to reiterate, the razor, requires two theories, or gueses, about one thing, with no evidence for or against either one of them two gueses, or with equil evedence, or with no evidence against it. But, we don't have this in our debate. We got evidence for, but none against, god. You have the big bang theory, wich dosen't explain how some elements came into place(barium, i believe. Sorry if you've alredy debunked this... I may have forgotton) evolution, with almost no evidence for, and a heck lot against.

Also, the thing i said about jhon, and the other one thing, was to prove those other ghostples rong.

[Diego]

We cant

see, observe, measure, repeat and conclude

evolution. In fact, I don't see any evolution in the fossle records at all. All I see is small little jumps that happen at sertain times. No gradual movenment, just all these big jumps.

...so? We are talking about the Big Bang, not evolution, Pie. Astrophysics is not the same as Biology. I'll take you up on a debate about Biology any day, though.

Regardless, on your point against evolution, I'll quote directly from a friend of mine in another forum.

Scientific theories are strengthened by having two distinct qualities: (i) mathematical proof as part of their evidence, (ii) be able to explain what we see and (iii) be able to predict what we would see if we went looking.

For example, the physicist Paul Dirac combined quantum theory and relativity to predict the existence of antimatter. This theory, or combination of theories, satisfied and satisfies all three criteria.

Biological theories of course can't have much mathematical proof making up their evidence so they rely on (ii) and (iii) a lot. Evolution, for example, has millions of examples of (ii) and thousands of examples of (iii). One of them is this:

With the theory of evolution bound with the fossil record researchers predicted the existence of Tiktaalik roseae, an "almost perfect intermediate between fish and amphibians".

How did they find it? They knew when it should have lived so they knew which strata to look in and on what continent. They knew what it should look like and how it could have lived. And all their predictions were proven correct.

If that isn't an example of testable assertions grounded in reality I don't know what is.

Long story short, I want an explanation as to how the researchers found what they did in that particular strata.

He's a swell fellow.

we can't

see, observe, measure, repeat and conclude

the big bang, we can only theorise.

Wrong. We can see, observe, measure, repeat and conclude all of the elements included in the Big Bang theory. We can't make another Big Bang, of course, because we don't have the entire mass of the Universe condensed in a singularity, nor do we have any singularities outside of black holes at the moment, but the mathematics, the experiments and the predictions have been made and accomplished time and time again.

watch on the beatch(creation of the world), the tide going in and out(evolution and the like), and a note saying "bob made this"(religion) and this watch can also talk, and it says that bob made him (Jesus)

Except there's hundreds of thousands of notes with different names on them. And the tide comes up higher and higher and retreats less and less each time. And there's a bomb that says the watch is stupid (Mohammed) and there's a much older rock that says crazy things (Buddha) and there's a seashell yelling out nonsense (Zarathrusta).

Bad analogy. Nowhere as clear cut as you portray it to be, Pie.

You see, as sherlock holms sais, "if you reason out all the other posobilities, than the final one, nomater how unreasonable, is the thing that happened"

Evolution can clearly be reasoned out.

Oh boy, someone better go tell all the Biology PhDs that Pie's going to knock their socks right off.

BECAUS, like it or not, and compleatly contradictal to that razor thing, complex things do happen, even when there is a less complex thing standing right there in your face.(such as, the girl with the gun was framed by so and so who did what and what wich triggerd this and that wich did what and thus happened and then she grabbed it, against the girl killed the man.)

How does this reason evolution out? Evolution is all about complex things happening.

Ockham's Razor simply says that, in logic, the argument that makes the smallest assumptions is the likeliest to be correct.

Also, that thing about the scrap of a ghosple of Jhon, was to prove that those other ghosples with jesus just being a hippy indi guy where fals.

Even though they are all as old, if not older than John's? Why does John's Gospel hold any more validity than any other gospels?

[Nosajimiki]

Do you know what the meteorologists say what happened? A puff (or something) of warm air... or a high thingy, came frome texas and slowd the huricane down. Do you know how common that is? it's not a once in a year thing. Not a once in a decade. Not a once in a century. A once in a melenia thing happened RIGHT there.

We get high presure fronts from the north-west all the time, most huricans that aproach New Orleans from that direction pull East just before landfall, especially slow moving high cat. storms like that one. b/c huricans create atmospheric depressions which pull other weather activites into them which causes the whole oposite and equal reaction thing pushing it away. And the slow aproach ment that it would be more easlly pushed. There was nothing unusual about that small jog east. A lot of things had to go right (or wrong as you might view it) for Katrina to even end up where it was as powerful as it was, you can only loose so many games of dice before somthing favorable happens. Can't say I agree with you explaination of what happened there, but I atleast apreaciate that you aren't claiming that God was TRYING to wipe the city out.

[Floris]

and the first little scrap of the new testimant we have is of Jhon, so we should assume that Jhon was made first, and thus more reliable. becaus as we all know, [partly sarcastic]the human memory is succomable to forgetting.[/partly sarcastic]

Can't follow you here.
Firstly, it is not because of the four books that write about Jesus' life, there is one that writes about his earlier life that that book is older. (eg if I am to write a book about Caesar tomorrow, my book will not be older than any book written before mine about Napoleon). The subject of the book may older, the book itself not.

Historians have deducted John's gospel to having been written somewhere around 100 AD. Mark's is generally accepted to having been first (around 60 AD), closely followed by Matthew, 65AD, and Luke 70 AD. (the dates are not fixed, and there is still much discussion, yet it is the order that matters)

Now, the three elder are closer to each other than any of them is to John's, but that does not make John's gospel reliable or the other gospels wrong. John is the gospel that explicitly introduces Jesus as God incarnate, so one could argue it is more focused on the 'divinity' and thus probably more difficult to accept.

Even more, in my opinion if you go with the Bible, you either accept all of it or none of it. It is not a book wherein you can choose parts that fit you best.

Besides that, there are at least nine and perhaps even more non-canonical gospels, or gospels that were not taken up into the New Testament when it was established(4th century AD).



I have to say that despite my belief/faith, I can not accept the New Testament as (rational, logical, scientific) evidence of the existance of God or the divinity of Jesus.

I am more likely to find God and Jesus in other people, in their actions, in their feelings, in their lives, than in some books written 2000 years ago.