Look at the national geographic’s genographic project. Take a dna swab and take part in it if you like. Shows human evolution.
Also, what are the church’s stances on dinosaurs and say, planets? What if we found water and alien bacteria on one of jupiter’s moons? NASA are suggesting that this is more than possible. How is all this explained by the church?
I had a girlfriend one whose mother was very religious and when I wanted to watch a space documentary on tv she hated it and wouldn’t watch it(I was told by her daughter that she doesn’t ‘do’ space). It was as if she dismissed it and all the scientific evidence because it pretty much disproved most of her beliefs.
I once went to Greece on holiday and bought some books about Greek mythology because I’ve always been interested in ancient Greece.
I noticed early on that the stories were obviously impossible but were a collection of useful moral guides and parables. I also noticed that some of the stories and ideas had been copied BY THE BIBLE which came long after.
I feel that religion is based on the workings of wise men or philosophers who invented moral stories to control the general population and prevent the world from descendoing into total anarchy.
If you tell poor 3rd world latin american catholics (let’s say Peru for example) that they will be ok in the next life becaus ethey go to church and believe in god then they will behave. Even though the rich are super rich, have everything and the poor have to search waste sites all for things like plastic bottles or wood to sell for pennies. They believe that this terrible existence they live in is ok because they are going to heaven after.
If there is no next life or god or heaven then they would likely say, f*ck this, I want a lamborghini and I’m taking one. I like your Tv can I have it, no, (bang bang), it’s mine now. Those rich people have everything, lets form a mob and kill them and take their possessions. Great idea. After all there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. You only live once.
The good thing about religion is that it is like a moral law. It controls populations and generally makes them act better. It does however cause many wars and much suffering.
I say, read religious books for the moral guidance and philosophy in them and ignore the hocus pocus stuff.
And if you are an athiest or agnostic then turn to philosophy instead of religion for information on how to lead a good life.
I once went to Greece on holiday and bought some books about Greek mythology because I’ve always been interested in ancient Greece.
I noticed early on that the stories were obviously impossible but were a collection of useful moral guides and parables. I also noticed that some of the stories and ideas had been copied BY THE BIBLE which came long after.[/quote]
Actually, if we are to believe the reasonable, and most likely correct dates, for most of the old testament it is the Bible which “came long after” Hesiod. The Greeks certainly do not represent a particularly old culture, they are considered to be the birth of modern western culture because, well, they are relatively modern. Anyway I get your point, you just might want to get the facts straight.
Unless you have some real historical evidence for this, this is just some baseless derogatory conjecture that ignores the real and complex issues that surround religious belief in modern times and most likely also existed when these religions were developing.
While from time to time you will find someone who advocates that this is how religion should be used, there is as far as I can tell no evidence to support the sort of general and historical claim you’ve given here.
Just out of curiosity, I see lots of people do this, both in the internet world and else where. Why though do people say things like “I feel that”, and “In my opinion” when talking about things that are seemingly of a factual nature? In this case it would be a historical fact whether or not religion formed in this way and severed this purpose… that’s hardly something for you to “feel” or hold an opinion on.
Something I also see a lot is religious people constantly pushing religion on others based on no facts or proof other than faith.
On the above comment…I say ‘I feel that’ or ‘in my opinion’ because I speak for me. Others may disagree, they can speak for themselves.
To the religious out there:
Prove god exists and if you cannot, please explain why. Don’t hit me with a counter question politician style.
Please explain the dinosaurs and where they come into the bible’s explanation of creation.
Please explain how the earth was formed, the sun, the moon and where, say, meteors come from.
For the people who selectively agree with parts of the bible and not others, is it not the whole point that you are supposed to believe the whole book? For example, when science explains something conclusively and a story in the bible is shown to be just a story(and even christians admit maybe Adam and Eve wasn’t the way it went, maybe noah’s ark didn’t happen), do you dismiss this and believe the rest of the book or what?
If a kind athiest does good all his life, saves lives, is generous and makes the world a better place, not fearing god, simply because he’s a good guy does that mean that a christian ‘god fearing’ person who goes to church but isn’t a very good person is any better?
If god existed would he reject the athiest good man for being a non believer and accept the flawed christian who is a believer.
I agree that pure faith could affect a person in a positive way. Simply believing in something can change you for the better but that doesn’t mean that the thing you believe in exists.
[quote]Scottish-G wrote:
Something I also see a lot is religious people constantly pushing religion on others based on no facts or proof other than faith.
[/quote]
Lots of nonreligious people do the exact same thing with their own ideologies. So you draw attention to this point because?
[quote]
On the above comment…I say ‘I feel that’ or ‘in my opinion’ because I speak for me. Others may disagree, they can speak for themselves.[/quote]
You missed the point. It is a historical fact whether or not religion developed and continues to thrive for the reasons you listed. How you feel about the topic or your personal opinion about the topic matters about as much as a fundamentalist christian’s feelings or opinion on whether or not there really was a big bang. This isn’t liking judging music or something where your feelings or opinions matter… it is a matter of fact. As I said, if you want to put forward your view you must substantiate it with appropriate evidence, something you haven’t done. Saying “well, it’s how I feel on the topic” doesn’t alleviate the need for evidence.
What are you trying to prove by asking these questions? Are those suppose to constitute some sort of knock-down argument against religion? I find it hard to believe you ask they questions out of sincerity, since if you really wanted answers to them a quick trip to the library or book store would provide you lots of different theistic approaches to these questions. Asking random strangers on an internet forum for answers to these questions is stupid at best, and picking a fight at worst.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
OK you Christians you.
Riddle me this- why do they believe carbon dating when they’re talking about St. Paul’s bones, but not when they’re used on the rocks that say the Earth is millions of years old?
Winner gets the Holy Grail and a cool new hat.
[/quote]
Wow Irish, this was a retarded thread. Reading this was like reading one of Pat’s posts, I can’t believe it came from you. Catholics DO NOT EQUAL crazy fundamentalists. And as others have pointed out, it’s not carbon dating.
Now the damn church has a history of stupid anti-science stuff, and to your larger point crazies should be seen as just that, crazy. But this thread is a fail.
I don’t want to go to a library I’m asking people here.
Back to my post…
So nobody can comment or answer my 6 points then…
I’m backing up the OP becuase my country and yours are heavily dominated by christianity and I feel it is forced on us. If you dare speak up against this dominance then you get furious christians attacking you.
It seems to be totally ok to declare that you’re a christian AND FORCE YOUR VIEWS ON OTHERS, but its ‘picking a fight’ if you declare you are an athiest or agnostic.
I haven’t even decided what I am, probably agnostic. I’m open minded to reasonable arguements.
Answer the 6 points and who knows, I might come round to christian thinking. It’s just that up until now in my life, nobody has offered me any answers other than blind faith. I am not a sheep and I think for myself. Blind faith is not the answer to anything. We research countless other aspects in our lives from what we eat, how we train, where we will live, what car we will drive all because whe have reasons for it. Not because other people told you “that’s the way it is and don’t question it”.
The OP dared to speak out and I was glad he dared to and backed him up.
If you reply to me(anyone)then reply to my 6 points please individually and expand on each. If you do not then I’ll take it that you cannot…no ifs, no buts… Any further comments are then null and void. Prove me wrong.
[quote]Scottish-G wrote:
I don’t want to go to a library I’m asking people here.[/quote]
This is certainly what the intellectually honest man says, “I’m too lazy to do any real research or look at what the best and brightest have said on a topic. Instead, I think I’ll ask a bunch of strangers to explain it to me on an internet forum”.
Why would you expect anyone to take you seriously when you haven’t even done any work yourself?
Sure, but why would anyone take your questions seriously when you yourself don’t take them seriously? I do not believe in Christianity and even I’m put off by your arrogant attitude.
No, you’re not backing up the OP… you came into this thread with a bunch of random nonsense that has nothing to do with the original topic of hypocrisy in the church regarding science and radiometric dating methods.
This is a completely subjective experience. I’m sure there are many Christians who feel the same way about atheists.
Yeah, that’s the attitude that will get you respect.
I’ll bite. First, in some ways you’re going about this all wrong. Demanding answers to every little nit-picky question is silly. If all it takes to discredit an idea is to find some random questions that the idea cannot answer then we have to discredit all of science, since I surely can find lots of questions that science cannot answer. An intellectually honest examination of issues surrounding theism (belief in God) would start not with some list of ad hoc questions like “how do you explain the dinos?”, but instead would start with more fundamental questions. In a similar way in physics we aren’t concerned at first about obscure questions like “what would happen if I throw this projectile under such and such conditions”, but rather we are concerned with more fundamental questions about the nature of gravity, etc. The former approach is called argument grabbing, which is when you just look for any old argument to discredit an idea you don’t like instead of trying to really understand the issues.
Anyway, as for you’re 6 questions, here I go.
While this sounds like a natural question to ask a theist, It really isn’t a good place to start. What I mean is this. You want some proof that God exists. In order to give you such a proof, what I first need is some description of God which I can use for the proof. For example, I need to know that God is the thing that such and such holds true. Then, in order to prove that God exists what I really do is prove that a thing that such and such holds true of exists, and hence therefore that God exists. If you actually look at the various attempts to “prove” the existence of God throughout the ages (Not that I endorse any of them), this is ultimately how they proceed. First they establish some description of God that serves in the proof, then they prove that thing exists. Really this is no different then how a physicist proves that some new particle exists. If I want to prove that, say, electrons exist, what I do is to figure out some description of elections, “electrons are things that such and such holds true”, and then I go looking for things that such and such holds true.
Anyway, the point is that the real question is what is God? If I were you, I wouldn’t start by asking Christians to prove that God exists, I would start by asking for some coherent description of God. Now, it might be that whatever God is that the existence of it doesn’t admit of proof. Now, even if God’s existence doesn’t admit of deductive proof that doesn’t mean God cannot exist, or even that it is irrational to believe in God. There might be other indirect evidence for the existence of God that makes belief in God rational.
Ultimately the point though is that charging into the issue and demanding a proof of God’s existence won’t get you anywhere, since you haven’t even bothered to ask this sort of more fundamental questions.
This is one of those silly ad hoc questions that I cannot see by relevant to supporting theism. Could you not just accept that there are some things in theism that we just don’t know, just like there are some things in physics we just don’t know? If you absolutely demand an answer, I’ve heard many explanations of this issue. Some are better then others. This though is where you have to go to a library and do some research for yourself. There certainly isn’t just one standard answer Christians could give to this question.
Isn’t this one pretty straight forward from the Bible? God created them, etc? I’m not quite sure what you don’t understand about the standard Christian account of this. Now, if you’re real question is how do Christians explain the discrepancies between their creation story and what modern science tells us, there are many answers. As you’ve seen in this thread, some Christians don’t buy the literal interpretation story in the first place, so they have no problem at all. Other Christians do, but again there is no one answer to these questions. You would have to go out and do some research yourself.
If you are curious, the answer to this question that I think holds the most water is in fact the simplest answer. That answer is that God created the Earth and universe with maturity. What I mean by that is that he created the Earth and Universe 6-10k years ago, as Genesis says, but that when he created everything he created the universe to look as if it had developed by natural processes. This answer actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it, for if God wanted to create a Universe that was governed by laws and regular processes you would assume that when he created it that it would look like it had been governed by laws and regular processes all along. The beauty in this explanation is that it nods and agrees with science while still holding to the creationist story. It’s also consistent and perfectly conceivable, if you’re ready to conceive of a God making the universe at all.
Here you are just begging the question. Is it not the whole point that you’re suppose to believe the whole book? I don’t know. The Christians who feel this way won’t just bow and admit that the contradictory science is right–that’s why you have a whole genre of books of Christian apologetics. Some Christians don’t feel this way, and do accept modern scientific theories. There’s nothing though inherently wrong with this position, you can still maintain your belief in God and hold to Christian dogma without accepting the Bible as the infallible word of God. You might ask well why believe some parts but not others. The obvious answer is that you think some parts are true and others not…
This is really a loaded question, whether or not you are sincerely asking it. There are many issues here that need to be disambiguated. I won’t even try to touch it, since I don’t have the time, but there are several points to keep in mind. First and foremost, just because something is counter intuitive to you doesn’t mean it’s false. That is, it might not seem right to you that a loving God would condemn an otherwise good man for a lack of faith, but your intuition on the topic has nothing to do with truth. For example, it is quite counter intuitive to think that we are riding on a giant ball spinning thousands of miles an hour around another giant ball, but nevertheless is true. The point is you’re going to need a better argument then “well, it doesn’t seem right to me” if you want to make this point. Next is the very issue of “good”. Most fundamentalists Christians hold that even the littlest bit of sin disqualifies you from Heaven. If this is true, then it naturally follows that the atheist, however good he normally is, just isn’t good enough for heaven. As to whether this is fair, God has offered everyone a “get out of hell free card”, if they just accept it. Seems pretty fair overall. Anyway, the issues are complicated and we’re certainly not going to sort them out over an internet forum discussion, so why don’t you go and read some on the topic and decide for yourself?
This isn’t a question. What you say is true though, and I agree that this is a silly line of argument from Christians.
[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
OK you Christians you.
Riddle me this- why do they believe carbon dating when they’re talking about St. Paul’s bones, but not when they’re used on the rocks that say the Earth is millions of years old?
Winner gets the Holy Grail and a cool new hat.
Wow Irish, this was a retarded thread. Reading this was like reading one of Pat’s posts, I can’t believe it came from you. Catholics DO NOT EQUAL crazy fundamentalists. And as others have pointed out, it’s not carbon dating.
Now the damn church has a history of stupid anti-science stuff, and to your larger point crazies should be seen as just that, crazy. But this thread is a fail.[/quote]
No, I made a mistake. That’s why I let the thread die, or so I thought.
Although, to defend myself in one manner- carbon dating goes back typically 60k years, which is far more than creationists will admit that Earth has gone. So on that point I don’t feel wrong. Wrong method, same result.
However, I did make a mistake and will admit it. I got my superhero worshippers fucked up when I made the thread.
What is the fascination Catholics seem to have with making relics out of body parts? Seriously. I’ve been researching places to visit in my trip to Italy this Fall, and it is amazing how many cathedrals have these relics, which they claim are original body parts of various saints (The Incorrupt Jaw and Tongue of Saint Anthony of Padua, etc.).
What’s with Buddhist pagodas alleged to have cremated remains of Siddhartha Gautama? It’s because of a perceived ‘holiness’ about the Saint’s physical affects. When most of these people died it was the Middle Ages or before, so maybe that’s why you think the practice is backward-ass.
[quote]Therizza wrote:
The oldest rocks on earth are presently below the Appalachian mountains, pre-Cambrian I believe. Thanks for the apology.[/quote]
Canada or Australia more likely. One of my grad school professors, Kent Condie, specializes in PreCrambrian (more accurately Archean and Hadean) rocks and tectonics. Incidentally, he is a devout Mormon.
Also incidentally, there are more devout Christian geologists than you might imagine. It’s time for folks to lose the presumptions about science and religion. The two are not mutually exclusive.
I coulda swore there was some deposits from the ‘first’ iteration of the Atlantic still stuck to the East coast, really fucking deep, as in about to drop into the mantle. And by ‘about to drop’ I mean in geologic time, lol. WTB the east coast as an active margin!
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
Canada or Australia more likely. One of my grad school professors, Kent Condie, specializes in PreCrambrian (more accurately Archean and Hadean) rocks and tectonics. Incidentally, he is a devout Mormon.
Also incidentally, there are more devout Christian geologists than you might imagine. It’s time for folks to lose the presumptions about science and religion. The two are not mutually exclusive.[/quote]
True. For example, Brigham Young explained fossils by saying that god made the earth out of materials from other earths that were far older. Religion has a remarkable elasticity when confronted by seemingly irreconcilable facts.
Unfortunately, religion rarely limits its claims to the divine, without crossing the line into explaining the physical world around us. How many religions try to explain the physical origins of the universe, claim material miracles, etc.?
I coulda swore there was some deposits from the ‘first’ iteration of the Atlantic still stuck to the East coast, really fucking deep, as in about to drop into the mantle. And by ‘about to drop’ I mean in geologic time, lol. WTB the east coast as an active margin![/quote]
Wow-- you’re making me dig deep into the granite which is my head… The east coast of the US is relatively young compared to say, the “Precambrian Shield” of Canada and the northern Mid-west US (michigan, etc). There are no huge mountain ranges there because of glaciation, but those glaciers exposed the older basement rocks underneath.