The American Fern Society is over 100 years old. With over 900 members worldwide, it is one of the largest international fern clubs in the world. It was established in 1893 with the objective of fostering interest in ferns and fern allies. To this end it encourages correspondence and the exchange of information and specimens between members via its newsletter the Fiddlehead Forum. We have “Fern Forays” into the woods every August. These field trips provide a wonderful way to learn more about wild ferns from experts and also afford an occasion to meet other people with a similar passion for ferns.
From “horny yoda” in another thread (“why all porn is gay”, Sex and the male animal)
I believe it shows just fine why religion can be dangeous:
I’ll give you an example how true that is:
On television, a german journalist I’m very fond of interviewed islamic students (I think it was the renowned Egyptian university al-Azhar, I may be wrong) about their education and their knowledge in general, they interrupted him: “We read the holy Quran.”
-“And what other books do you read”
-“We need no other books, this is god’s word, don’t you know” They seemed amused.
-"But how can you comprehend what’s in the mind of the western people? Won’t you give those western litarature, be it philosophy or religion a try?
Now they laughed at him, they made it clear they were totally pitying him, this funny westerner.
The answers were like this:
-“Why should we read other books, all books are right here, in the Quran.”
-“Every wisdom you will find on earth is in it.”
-“These other books are worthless to me when I can study god’s word.”
I think it’s OK to be frightened by that.
While “horny Yoda” was speaking of christianity and I of muslims, the gist is clear, I hope-
Having whackos who really believe they have god’s word at their side can lead to unpleasant things, depending on how you interpret the writings (which can be done just anhow, given the fact it’s thousands of year old mumbo jumbo on LSD in ancient greek)
God forbid God’s word!
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Looking at history , we see that christianism wasn’t very fond of reason, logic or research.[/quote]
To be fair, many of history’s great scientists where also faithful believers. Newton, for example, known as one of the most influential scientist ever, spent more time studying the Bible than he did doing science. Scripture was his true passion.
Science isn’t incompatible with belief in God; it’s incompatible with Bible literalism and religious fundamentalism. For the rest, anything that science proposes might simply be how the hypothetical God decided to have things works in His universe. Personally, I think evolution is much more wonderful (in the sense of evoking wonder) than ID, where the Designer has to punctually intervene directly to “design” lifeforms, as he seems incapable of creating a system where life will evolve on its own.
Why anyone prefers the incapable God is beyond me.
This thread has slowly become gay. That is a shame. I’m sure most of these arguements took place on the ID vs Evolution thread.
Agshag, I think you have some good ideas about separating religion from God, and not holding one responsible for the actions of another. Too often I think people abandon their faith entirely, when perhaps only abandonning their church was necessary.
To the invading Christian hordes - What is your purpose on this thread? Do you expect to gain converts? Do you just get off on trying to act morally superior to everyone? I’m confused as to exactly why you are posting on this thread.
[quote]swordthrower wrote:
toddjacobs13 wrote:
The Second Law of Thermodynamics argument holds no water. See the following:
The Miller-Urey experiment, for all its failings as far as creating a close approximation of Earth’s early atmosphere, certainly proved one thing. It is possible, even likely, to produce organic compounds and amino acids from inorganic compounds in a high energy environment.
An even simpler example of entropy failing to remove all order from a random system can be done in your kitchen. Toss some cooking oil in water. The oil will naturally form cells within the water. This is an instance where chemical self regulation trumps the literal predictions associated with entropy.
To anyone wishing to find a more detailed discussion on entropy and The Second Law of Thermodynamics, I highly recommend the following page. It is well laid out and written in plain language.
http://www.entropysimple.com/content.htm
Todd
Thanks, bro. I hate the entropy argument. Almost as much as I hate “irreducible complexity!”[/quote]
The one thing I really like about the second law argument is that you can automatically pick out people who have know understanding of science whatsoever.
[quote]pookie wrote:
To be fair, many of history’s great scientists where also faithful believers. Newton, for example, known as one of the most influential scientist ever, spent more time studying the Bible than he did doing science. Scripture was his true passion.
[/quote]
You’re right.
Generally, if someone wanted to be taken seriously as a scholar, he had to know everything, be it algebra, philosophy history or physics.
Nobody would have listened to a guy who couldn’t speak fluently latin.
And because church’s supremacy nobody would’ve questioned this.
But that doesn’t contradict my opinion on religion and science. For that I don’t have to pull out Copernicus’ case.
It’s simpler: if you have the absolute truth (like the bible) and specialists who can provide you with it’s meaning (clergy), why would you need progress?
Progress itself would have no real meaning, in fact “history” as we know it has been viewed a lot differenty. People did not work for progress, at best they expected some kind of ending like “Judgement Day”.
[quote]Ren wrote:
Lorisco wrote:
A bunch of crap he has no idea about concerning theories
mate, if you want to talk theories, go check out the 2 evolution/ID threads. Some VERY smart people, smarter than most of us , highlighted what it is that makes a scientific theory fact.
Oh yeah, earth is flat theory, bad call. While you want to say it is a theory, and fact, it was not fact, since all you had to do was circumnavigate the globe, or at least go far enough till you hit the north american continent and are lefting scratching your head wondering why you hadn’t hit the edge of the earth.
The theories we talk about have been study, theorized, tested and proven true time and time again. Please learn basic science before you go railing against theories, something you and every other ID loving idiot loves to do.[/quote]
Let me break this down for you, mate! The evolutionary theory calls for millions of intermediary species between man and apes. They have found none that have been authenticated. So maybe in your mind the lack of evidence is proof, but to the rest of us it demonstrates the complete opposite.
Oh, and by the way, just because someone is smart and comes up with a theory doesn’t make it fact. The validity of a theory is not based on the IQ of the person who created it.
Lastly, the theory accepted as fact was that the world was flat. That was scientific fact until proven wrong. Look it up in your history books mate!
[quote]FlyingEmuOfDoom wrote:
Imagine if you were in a world where
everyone was perfect, everyone appeared to be loving each other -
everyone was working for each other, but they weren’t free to do so.
They had to love each other. They had to work for each other. They had
to benefit each other. It wouldn’t work. It’s like something out of an
Orson Welle’s book, or one of the Star Trek episodes, to have that
happen.
Now the Lord couldn’t just set it up so there would be appearances of
freedom, but then if we went too far He would stop us. He couldn’t do that because that would wreck freedom for us. Imagine that. We could do anything we wanted. And yet as soon as we went to do something wrong, God would stop us, “Nope, you can’t do that.” It wouldn’t work that way. Someone asked me once, “Do you mean, Adolph Hitler was allowed to exterminate six million Jews simply to preserve his freedom?” And the answer is, yes, but not just
Adolph Hitler’s freedom, mankind’s freedom. God can’t break His rules.
If God came down and stopped Adolph Hitler by some miracle, everyone would lose their freedom. He’d take away humanity. Now God did work through man, through armies, through setting up situations to help man defeat Adolph Hitler but God couldn’t come down and break His laws of order. If He did, He would destroy our humanity.
[/quote]
I think your meant George Orwell, not Orson Welles.
If you are talking about mankind’s freedom, what about the freedom of the 6 million Jews that were killed. Didn’t the Jews lose their freedom when they were thrown in to concentration camps.
Also, nowhere in your post did you address birth defects, cancer, AIDs, or any number of debilitating and deadly diseases. If we were created by God, why do any of these things exist.
Remember what things were like for you before you were born? That’s how things will be for you when you are dead… is there a reason to assume otherwise?
Being finite and dealing with infiniti means the nature of infiniti will forever elude us; with that in mind the nature of Gods(if there is one) ultimate truth is always in question and so Gods nature is as well…
One thing is for certain: none of us knows for sure(except crap like Jesus and Allah and all that other “he loves my pathetic, repenting ass,” that stuffs a load).
[quote]Lorisco wrote:
Lastly, the theory accepted as fact was that the world was flat. That was scientific fact until proven wrong. Look it up in your history books mate!
[/quote]
just out of curiosity…what was the name of the scientist who claimed that the world was flat? is there a scientific study he/she did claiming a flat earth that I can look at?
[quote]seekingstrength wrote:
FlyingEmuOfDoom wrote:
Imagine if you were in a world where
everyone was perfect, everyone appeared to be loving each other -
everyone was working for each other, but they weren’t free to do so.
They had to love each other. They had to work for each other. They had
to benefit each other. It wouldn’t work. It’s like something out of an
Orson Welle’s book, or one of the Star Trek episodes, to have that
happen.
Now the Lord couldn’t just set it up so there would be appearances of
freedom, but then if we went too far He would stop us. He couldn’t do that because that would wreck freedom for us. Imagine that. We could do anything we wanted. And yet as soon as we went to do something wrong, God would stop us, “Nope, you can’t do that.” It wouldn’t work that way. Someone asked me once, “Do you mean, Adolph Hitler was allowed to exterminate six million Jews simply to preserve his freedom?” And the answer is, yes, but not just
Adolph Hitler’s freedom, mankind’s freedom. God can’t break His rules.
If God came down and stopped Adolph Hitler by some miracle, everyone would lose their freedom. He’d take away humanity. Now God did work through man, through armies, through setting up situations to help man defeat Adolph Hitler but God couldn’t come down and break His laws of order. If He did, He would destroy our humanity.
I think your meant George Orwell, not Orson Welles.
If you are talking about mankind’s freedom, what about the freedom of the 6 million Jews that were killed. Didn’t the Jews lose their freedom when they were thrown in to concentration camps.
Also, nowhere in your post did you address birth defects, cancer, AIDs, or any number of debilitating and deadly diseases. If we were created by God, why do any of these things exist. [/quote]
I didn’t write this, a Pastor did.
You’re question goes right back to the freedom part. God gave people free will to either love him or not. Health problems all stem from this. Aids - immoral sexual conduct, cancer - degredation of food, not taking care of our bodies, etc.
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
pookie wrote:
To be fair, many of history’s great scientists where also faithful believers. Newton, for example, known as one of the most influential scientist ever, spent more time studying the Bible than he did doing science. Scripture was his true passion.
You’re right.
Generally, if someone wanted to be taken seriously as a scholar, he had to know everything, be it algebra, philosophy history or physics.
Nobody would have listened to a guy who couldn’t speak fluently latin.
And because church’s supremacy nobody would’ve questioned this.
But that doesn’t contradict my opinion on religion and science. For that I don’t have to pull out Copernicus’ case.
It’s simpler: if you have the absolute truth (like the bible) and specialists who can provide you with it’s meaning (clergy), why would you need progress?
[/quote]
99% of the people in Western Christiandom were illiterate peasants who didn’t have any time to think about anything but what the next harvest would bring. The Papal empire depended on this system, and so Earth shaking theories were just not important or feared.
[quote]Lorisco wrote:
Ren wrote:
Lorisco wrote:
A bunch of crap he has no idea about concerning theories
mate, if you want to talk theories, go check out the 2 evolution/ID threads. Some VERY smart people, smarter than most of us , highlighted what it is that makes a scientific theory fact.
Oh yeah, earth is flat theory, bad call. While you want to say it is a theory, and fact, it was not fact, since all you had to do was circumnavigate the globe, or at least go far enough till you hit the north american continent and are lefting scratching your head wondering why you hadn’t hit the edge of the earth.
The theories we talk about have been study, theorized, tested and proven true time and time again. Please learn basic science before you go railing against theories, something you and every other ID loving idiot loves to do.
Let me break this down for you, mate! The evolutionary theory calls for millions of intermediary species between man and apes. They have found none that have been authenticated. So maybe in your mind the lack of evidence is proof, but to the rest of us it demonstrates the complete opposite.
Oh, and by the way, just because someone is smart and comes up with a theory doesn’t make it fact. The validity of a theory is not based on the IQ of the person who created it.
Lastly, the theory accepted as fact was that the world was flat. That was scientific fact until proven wrong. Look it up in your history books mate!
[/quote]
The fact that the Earth is round was known since the Greeks… And that was long before the scientific method was refined into what we know it as today. So calling it a “scientific fact” is a stretch.
As for your “no evidence” argument, what about Home Erectus, Australopithecus, Home Robustus, etc? Do you believe the findings to be fabricated? Misinterpreted? The biggest problem with armchair science is that you aren’t adding any productive input. Your opinions are centered around breaking down a particular theory, yet you offer no substitute! If you don’t like evolution, and you think it is being taught in error, then come up with a better solution, and set up experiments to prove you are correct.
What “proof” of macroevolution do you want? We know from geology and astronomy that the earth is around 4.5 billion years old. What was life doing all that time? Was it waiting around for the Intelligent Designer to set things in motion? Why is it that wherever we look in the universe, we see all phenomena governed by physical laws, yet have to resort to supernatural explanations here on Earth?
Anyway, isn’t this a thread for atheists? If you want to bitch about the conspiracy of secular scientists to teach kids evolution (and probably turn them into gay heathens), go the ID thread. If you want to save souls, or preach, go to the Christian thread. Thanks for your input, now bugger off.
[quote]FlyingEmuOfDoom wrote:
You’re question goes right back to the freedom part. God gave people free will to either love him or not. Health problems all stem from this. Aids - immoral sexual conduct, cancer - degredation of food, not taking care of our bodies, etc.
[/quote]
people who love God don’t get colds?
[quote]FlyingEmuOfDoom wrote:
I didn’t write this, a Pastor did.
[/quote]
So you posted some essay by a Pastor for our reading pleasure. Wow, thank you so much! What better place for it than the Atheists thread? Good work, Godboy.
So be it. God gave me free will. I have used that free will to come to the conclusion that God is unecessary in my view of the universe. If he wants to send me to hell for that, then I’m sure I’ll be in good company. I just hope you are on your best behavior in this life so I don’t have to deal with you for eternity…
And that’s a good explanation why Christians never get sick. I always wondered why it was only atheists, jews, muslims, hindus, buddhists, and wiccans who got sick. Now I know! Man, I am kicking myself right now! Praise Jesus! Oh my god, its working! That rash on my balls has disappeared! and it doesn’t burn when I pee! Thank you Jesus!
[quote]FlyingEmuOfDoom wrote:
seekingstrength wrote:
FlyingEmuOfDoom wrote:
Imagine if you were in a world where
everyone was perfect, everyone appeared to be loving each other -
everyone was working for each other, but they weren’t free to do so.
They had to love each other. They had to work for each other. They had
to benefit each other. It wouldn’t work. It’s like something out of an
Orson Welle’s book, or one of the Star Trek episodes, to have that
happen.
Now the Lord couldn’t just set it up so there would be appearances of
freedom, but then if we went too far He would stop us. He couldn’t do that because that would wreck freedom for us. Imagine that. We could do anything we wanted. And yet as soon as we went to do something wrong, God would stop us, “Nope, you can’t do that.” It wouldn’t work that way. Someone asked me once, “Do you mean, Adolph Hitler was allowed to exterminate six million Jews simply to preserve his freedom?” And the answer is, yes, but not just
Adolph Hitler’s freedom, mankind’s freedom. God can’t break His rules.
If God came down and stopped Adolph Hitler by some miracle, everyone would lose their freedom. He’d take away humanity. Now God did work through man, through armies, through setting up situations to help man defeat Adolph Hitler but God couldn’t come down and break His laws of order. If He did, He would destroy our humanity.
I think your meant George Orwell, not Orson Welles.
If you are talking about mankind’s freedom, what about the freedom of the 6 million Jews that were killed. Didn’t the Jews lose their freedom when they were thrown in to concentration camps.
Also, nowhere in your post did you address birth defects, cancer, AIDs, or any number of debilitating and deadly diseases. If we were created by God, why do any of these things exist.
I didn’t write this, a Pastor did.
You’re question goes right back to the freedom part. God gave people free will to either love him or not. Health problems all stem from this. Aids - immoral sexual conduct, cancer - degredation of food, not taking care of our bodies, etc.
[/quote]
Dude,
I know whatever I say, you will reply with some platitude that they taught you in Sunday school. But, here are some thigs you might have a harder time answering. I have a daughter that was born with a severe birth defect. As far as I know, she did not cause this herself. What is up with that? A boy in her class was a normally functioning little boy until he had a stroke. What was his sin? My wife’s uncle was struck by truck when he was 8 years old. His mind functioned fine, but his resulting physical problems forced him to live in a nursing home for most of his life. Where is his freedom?
LORISCO and FLYINGEMUOFDOOM thank you for destroying a good thread. Do you really think your opinion is of higher regard than every scientist’s. And don’t you guys believe that woman is made from man’s rib? Next time stay the fuck out of a thread when you know you are only going to carry on tired old arguements that no one will ever agree on.
[quote]FlyingEmuOfDoom wrote:
seekingstrength wrote:
FlyingEmuOfDoom wrote:
Imagine if you were in a world where
everyone was perfect, everyone appeared to be loving each other -
everyone was working for each other, but they weren’t free to do so.
They had to love each other. They had to work for each other. They had
to benefit each other. It wouldn’t work. It’s like something out of an
Orson Welle’s book, or one of the Star Trek episodes, to have that
happen.
Now the Lord couldn’t just set it up so there would be appearances of
freedom, but then if we went too far He would stop us. He couldn’t do that because that would wreck freedom for us. Imagine that. We could do anything we wanted. And yet as soon as we went to do something wrong, God would stop us, “Nope, you can’t do that.” It wouldn’t work that way. Someone asked me once, “Do you mean, Adolph Hitler was allowed to exterminate six million Jews simply to preserve his freedom?” And the answer is, yes, but not just
Adolph Hitler’s freedom, mankind’s freedom. God can’t break His rules.
If God came down and stopped Adolph Hitler by some miracle, everyone would lose their freedom. He’d take away humanity. Now God did work through man, through armies, through setting up situations to help man defeat Adolph Hitler but God couldn’t come down and break His laws of order. If He did, He would destroy our humanity.
I think your meant George Orwell, not Orson Welles.
If you are talking about mankind’s freedom, what about the freedom of the 6 million Jews that were killed. Didn’t the Jews lose their freedom when they were thrown in to concentration camps.
Also, nowhere in your post did you address birth defects, cancer, AIDs, or any number of debilitating and deadly diseases. If we were created by God, why do any of these things exist.
I didn’t write this, a Pastor did.
You’re question goes right back to the freedom part. God gave people free will to either love him or not. Health problems all stem from this. Aids - immoral sexual conduct, cancer - degredation of food, not taking care of our bodies, etc.
[/quote]
Get off this thread you schmuck! You should be embarassed and ashamed to have exposed your crazy thoughts in such a public place. Cancer is a fucking disease not some punishment from your imaginary friend. There are many people who have loved ones with these diseases and you just insulted every one of them.
Seriously, fuck off.
[quote]wfifer wrote:
violatepropriety wrote:
I agree with Irish… true Atheism is PROOF of the non existence of God. Got it? Lets see it.
Philisophically speaking, well, thats a new thread now isnt it. : )
It is IMPOSSIBLE to prove that a god does not exist. The atheist is concerned with the lack of proof going the other way. He simply does not believe in any diety. And for that matter, why should anyone have to prove that something does not exist? Prove to me that there isn’t a omnipotent purple hippo living on the Sun swinging all the planets around.
[/quote]
Prove god does exist.
Ok, let’s continue this thread in the Christian thread. There’s more of them here than over there anyway, let’s have them follow us back home.
I’m JUST KIDDING.
Seriously, if you want people off the thread, the trick is simple: You ignore them.