[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
THE_CLAMP_DOWN wrote:
DO WE HAVE FREEDOM OF BELIEF?
YES[/quote]
Ever heard ‘attraction isnt a choice’? It doesnt just deal with people. It deals with everything.
Dont believe? (its ok, its not up to you)
Try
-Believing that this background is fuscia.
-Believing 2 + 2 is 5.
-Believing in Muhammad and the Quran as truth.
more than likely , you couldnt. If you did, its because your reasoning skills (be them very poor) allowed you to.
Reasoning ,not you, decides what you believe. Your reasoning (comes from what you know) is based off prior conditioning and how your brain (human nature) reacted to it.
pretty simple.
So if you have the correct conditioning and correct genetics for a certain belief like believing in a certain religion- than that belief will occur.
ex) Born to christian parents in a christian country with little or no outside influence with the correct brain. (this would include many, many factors and variables)
It doesnt even have to be that extreme. One can easily reject the strongest conditioning if the brain is right.
–
So knowing this, the only way I think Christianity could be true is if God has already decided who will be good and who will be bad. Making one grow up in the middle east and becoming Islam-- those are the “bad” ones, right?
But still , this doesnt make sense. Why even make a earth? Just send everyone straight to heaven and hell. Unless earth was for he/she/it’s own enjoyment.
[quote]THE_CLAMP_DOWN wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
THE_CLAMP_DOWN wrote:
DO WE HAVE FREEDOM OF BELIEF?
YES
Ever heard ‘attraction isnt a choice’? It doesnt just deal with people. It deals with everything.
Dont believe? (its ok, its not up to you)
Try
-Believing that this background is fuscia.
-Believing 2 + 2 is 5.
-Believing in Muhammad and the Quran as truth.
more than likely , you couldnt. If you did, its because your reasoning skills (be them very poor) allowed you to.
Reasoning ,not you, decides what you believe. Your reasoning (comes from what you know) is based off prior conditioning and how your brain (human nature) reacted to it.
pretty simple.
So if you have the correct conditioning and correct genetics for a certain belief like believing in a certain religion- than that belief will occur.
ex) Born to christian parents in a christian country with little or no outside influence with the correct brain. (this would include many, many factors and variables)
It doesnt even have to be that extreme. One can easily reject the strongest conditioning if the brain is right.
–
So knowing this, the only way I think Christianity could be true is if God has already decided who will be good and who will be bad. Making one grow up in the middle east and becoming Islam-- those are the “bad” ones, right?
But still , this doesnt make sense. Why even make a earth? Just send everyone straight to heaven and hell. Unless earth was for he/she/it’s own enjoyment. [/quote]
All you have done is provide the rationale you use for not believing in a specific interpretation of Christianity (or did you intend that for all religions TCD?), not sure what you want me to do about the internal struggles you have with that interpretation . . . .
As far as my arguments being “easily parried” I must note that you parried nothing. You use a pompous and arrogant tone to appear “above the argument” and allow you to assume a winning posture, yet you provide no argument at all.
Very well said.
Jeffey has a cheerleader!
Here’s the deal, boyz. You wanna waltz into the saloon where I have been minding my business playing poker with whoever wants in. But you bust in twirling your pearl-handled six shooters and shouting and demanding the bartender serve you first, etc. I’m sitting over against the wall and you’re disturbing my game, see. So if you smart off to me I might pull the twin triggers on my double barrel that’s resting on my knee under the table.
Now maybe I haven’t been all smoochy-poochie civil and all that, at times, but this is Testosterone Nation. You should be able to handle it. If you can’t, Go Greyhound.
[/quote]
The fact remains that this is essentially a public board and people are going to able to voice their opinions however they see fit. This particular argument tends to heat people up quickly on both sides because it deals with the very nature of our world.
However, my point still stands. Rather than attempt to refute anything said, you’ve still fired back with nothing but some snide remarks. I never said I couldn’t handle it, and neither did mbm.
You told me to “fetch” some facts and I did, and you reply with nothing of substance. You tell me to check out a source written by a Hydraulic Engineer, clearly THE word on theoretical physics. It’s interesting that the audio clip they chose for that site would date itself. Recorded in 1982, the man quotes NASA from 1975, claiming that no theory was accepted for the creation of our solar system.
That may have been true, you know, before any advanced imaging and probing technologies were available to astronomers. Today it is more than widely accepted that the solar system we live in, and likely the others we’ve discovered, are formed by a disturbance in the primordial dust and ice clouds orbiting the Sun. It could be any number of things; a Super Nova, large asteroids colliding, anything that would cause a release of energy.
Later he mentions that all of the evidence for human evolution could fit into a single coffin. An interesting mental image, and yet…even a single bone fragment is more evidence than is available for creation.
To be honest I stopped listening at this point. The very foundation of his argument to that point is that since science can’t answer it, the Bible MUST be true. Now that’s silly even for the most zealous believer.
It can be fun to cite someone with a PhD and a book and what seems like strong credentials, but the fact is that for a century the greatest minds of our world (which presumably God made in his own image, so they must be pretty great) have been attempting to refine, disprove, or prove conclusively the theory of relativity as stated by Einstein, potentially the greatest of all.
Not a single one has come up with a theory that ever has the speed of light increasing. Not once. Not ever. Variable light speed theories talk about the speed of light, as I stated earlier, moving more slowly through a medium of whatever variety. No theory has ever stated with any confidence or conclusiveness that light can move faster than the established light speed of 186,000 m/s.
That means that the next concept, that God popped the beams of light into place at the moment of creation, is the only obstacle remaining. The wonderful thing about this argument is that it has absolutely no logical foundation and yet no proof for or against it.
Oh wait, there is some version of proof against.
In 1964 radio static was discovered as background noise during another experiment. This microwave background radiation was consistent with the radiation signature that scientists and physicists agreed would be consistent with a Big Bang type of scenario. That scenario is assumed to have occurred around 13.5-14 billion years ago. There are some theories that allow for a younger universe, claiming that the Universe can only be said to be as old as the oldest thing in it.
Those theories are in line with the current age, as on 4/23/09, just last month a Gamma ray Burst was detected. It lasted for ten seconds, and was so distant from the detecting satellite that no visible light was seen. Images on the burst were taken on long wavelength sensors, and the lack of light on the shortest wavelengths is consistent with the drop off in light from an object roughly 13 billion light years away.
The Universe is at least as old as the oldest thing in it, and we just saw something new that happened 13 billion light years away, meaning the light was produced 13 billion years ago, and has been traveling toward our Earth since before our Sun was even beginning to form.
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Jeffe wrote:
That’s how it’s an error to say the universe was created in 6 days.
So you can conceive of a deity that can create time, the universe and all living life, but can’t create the appearance of age in all things? He can create a mature man, but not a mature universe? LOL - that was as far as you thought that one out?[/quote]
More “God did it” dogma. Absolutely retarded. Sorry if that offends, but it is.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
Jeffe wrote:
That’s how it’s an error to say the universe was created in 6 days.
So you can conceive of a deity that can create time, the universe and all living life, but can’t create the appearance of age in all things? He can create a mature man, but not a mature universe? LOL - that was as far as you thought that one out?
More “God did it” dogma. Absolutely retarded. Sorry if that offends, but it is.[/quote]
Nowhere did I say I can conceive of a deity that can create anything. Ever. Much less can I conceive of a deity able to bring everything from no-thing and be too tired to work on a Sunday. Come on, a day of rest? Open your eyes.
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
All you have done is provide the rationale you use for not believing in a specific interpretation of Christianity (or did you intend that for all religions TCD?), not sure what you want me to do about the internal struggles you have with that interpretation . . . .[/quote]
If you dont choose what you believe than religion is bogus.
You dont have to get into the little nitty details of christianity to prove or disprove it. Thats my point.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Mak, I have to tell you that you are a friend and that won’t change but your comments on this thread are completely and totally worthless. You sound like a little boy. Seriously. Time to grow up, son.
At least these other guys are willing to jump in and DEBATE. I respect them for that. You? Nope.[/quote]
…peer pressure or social ostracising doesn’t work too well on free thinkers mr. Harder, it usuallly only works on those who are weak minded…
More “God did it” dogma. Absolutely retarded. Sorry if that offends, but it is.[/quote]
Why should I be offended that you have chosen by your own free will to believe something different? I’ve got no problem with that . . . You already know that I choose to believe in God and I already know you choose to not believe in God. nothing new there . . .
Nowhere did I say I can conceive of a deity that can create anything. Ever. Much less can I conceive of a deity able to bring everything from no-thing and be too tired to work on a Sunday. Come on, a day of rest? Open your eyes.[/quote]
Hey, no problem - if your mind is too small to conceive of the basic concept of any deity, why are you even in a religion thread to begin with? Since your mind cannot conceive the topic being discussed, you come a little unprepared to deal with the questions. You should expand your mind a bit more and then come back when you have the capacity to deal with the issues.
[quote]THE_CLAMP_DOWN wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
All you have done is provide the rationale you use for not believing in a specific interpretation of Christianity (or did you intend that for all religions TCD?), not sure what you want me to do about the internal struggles you have with that interpretation . . . .
If you dont choose what you believe than religion is bogus.
You dont have to get into the little nitty details of christianity to prove or disprove it. Thats my point.[/quote]
Still not sure what the topic is that you are wishing to discuss and still waiting for the base construct here . . .
I am assuming that you did get to choose what you believe, so I guess religion is not bogus. Or am I wrong and you did not choose to believe what you currently believe?