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In a true scientific setting, you'll never hear an idea be rejected because an authority figure or holy book said that it wasn't so. It will be rejected based on lack of supporting evidence.

That is not true. Leading scientists rejected the big bang theory when proposed because of a holy book. They merely did so due to hostility rather than faith. Students interested in string theory were advised not to do research in that area because authority figures in the scientific community were dismissive of the theory.

Then I suppose that those were not true scientific settings then, were they? ...

The respective scientific communities of their day thought the above were true scientific settings. One has to recognize that scientists are humans and are affected by various belief systems and social norms - thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, decades ago, today and most likely tomorrow as well.

... Also, science doesn't have holy books; I think you're mistaken.

You are moving the goal post, from *a* holy book to *their* holy book. Given that these scientists were hostile towards the book it is pretty clear it was not one of theirs.

The interpretations are what people use to claim that the Bible says that the earth is a globe. But it actually says that the earth is flat. When you understand that the Bible is composed of stories written between 2000 to 3500 years ago, you see that it does have a place in history and that the things it describes are based on the knowledge and culture of those who wrote it. The notion of a spherical earth wasn't accepted until the 3rd Century in Greece, over 100 years after the last book of the Bible was written.

Actually the bible using the phraseology of a primitive sheep herder from millennia ago is a point I've often made. I've also already commented on scientists suggesting the earth was a sphere in classical era greece, 2nd century india, 17th century China, etc. That said, your citation does not demonstrate the Bible saying the earth is flat. That is an interpretation some men have made, often stretching the interpretation quite a bit. Starting from heaven above earth below, someone at a zenith, someone seeing all kingdoms from a height, the heavens spreading (sounds like cosmic inflation/expansion), the earth flattening (sounds like erosion), the earth is fixed (given the pace of continental drift an easily forgiven error), etc. Add to this that we are using a somewhat poetic english translation with know translation errors.

You'd be really hard-pressed to find someone who would try justifying an atrocity without religion;

Seriously? The nazis justified atrocities in a darwinian and scientific setting, the soviets justified atrocities with scientific and political rationalization, the khmer rouge also did so with political rationalization. Each of these groups killed millions without religious justification, they all view religion as an enemy.

Or were you just hoping to invoke Godwin's law with that comment? ;-)

I thought it was relevant since you are from the United States.

I may be in the US but the conversation was about religion in general. Again, you change the goal posts.

Again, the point is that even though Christians have the same holy text in common, they have beliefs that contradict with one another ...

Perhaps you missed the following in my first post of this thread: "Christianity has a wide range of opinions and only a very small minority are of the earth is 6,000 years old persuasion. Many are quite comfortable with the idea that the universe and earth are billions of years old."

You believe that scientif

In a true scientific setting, you'll never hear an idea be rejected because an authority figure or holy book said that it wasn't so. It will be rejected based on lack of supporting evidence.

That is not true. Leading scientists rejected the big bang theory when proposed because of a holy book. They merely did so due to hostility rather than faith. Students interested in string theory were advised not to do research in that area because authority figures in the scientific community were dismissive of the theory.

Then I suppose that those were not true scientific settings then, were they? Also, science doesn't have holy books; I think you're mistaken.

Are you talking about this source? If you scroll down, there's an illustration of the cosmos as described by the Bible, which the rest of that source covers.

No. That illustration is not what the bible describes, it is what interpretations that are making quite a stretch describe. Stretches of the nature that something being above the earth implies the earth is flat.

The interpretations are what people use to claim that the Bible says that the earth is a globe. But it actually says that the earth is flat. When you understand that the Bible is composed of stories written between 2000 to 3500 years ago, you see that it does have a place in history and that the things it describes are based on the knowledge and culture of those who wrote it. The notion of a spherical earth wasn't accepted until the 3rd Century in Greece, over 100 years after the last book of the Bible was written.

I'd also like to point out that you've completely ignored my statement that the Bible has been used to justify such atrocities as slavery.

Its an irrelevant straw man, off topic related to the church and science. Many scientists back in the day supported slavery and various atrocities as well.

No, it's quite relevant. It shows that religious minds are willing to use their faith to justify atrocities.

No it shows that human minds are able to use anything to justify atrocities. There are ample examples in modern history of human minds using some political writing to justify atrocities. There are ample examples of men of science using scientific theory and concepts to justify atrocities.

You'd be really hard-pressed to find someone who would try justifying an atrocity without religion; I haven't seen the rational or scientific equivalent of a meeting or message board where people openly claim their desire for a return to slavery or anything as equally horrible, especially today. Because your Bible is able to justify despicable actions, it is also in a sense advocating them. It's written (or divinely inspired) by god, who is infallible, so there's no reason for its followers to disagree with its teachings.

Catholics are not a majority of christians in the US. Also the graph shows that those believing in a literal interpretation are declining and those with faith believing in evolution are increasing.

So Catholics believe that the Bible advocates evolution while other Christians believe that the same bible argue against evolution. Also, you may have missed some of the other data in that source:

Catholics and various other denominations have nothing against evolution. The stats are US centric, basically you are cherry picking a subpopulation to artificially inflate the stats. Altering the conversation from christianity in general.

(Trimming the rest of the quote s

You can read an excellent analysis of the InfidelGuy wifeswap show by one of the forum's members here (look for the posts by "Buckster", starting with the very second one on the page). It's very revealing about the nature of "reality TV" in general, and just how removed from reality it really is.

Not to say that necessarily means this Space Cadets program is made the same way though, but it's definitely worth bearing in mind. (Major differences that spring to mind: participants not interacting with camera/production crew. Show streamed live on the web much of the time which allows for less editing down to change events without getting caught)

Maybe because you can prove a negative? The same argument is used by theists, and it gets old to say the least. So please stop deluding yourself by the thought that your ineloquant and childish quips should ever garner any kind of respect from anyone, even in the exceedingly high improbability that anything you've said might have some shade of truth.

I don't hate Christians, though some of them spread plenty of hate - see godhatesfags.com [warning: potentially offensive], and if your answer is "but that's not a true Christian", I suggest you google for "no true scotsman fallacy", and explain just what does constitute a true Christian.

As for the Bible, well, I do rather dislike it. it's a pretty nasty piece of work, on the whole - and hey, call me crazy, but I tend to be wary of anybody who bases their life and morality around a book which orders them to kill me for not believing as they do.

I'm not denying there's some good stuff in the Bible, and I've no problem with that - in fact, I'll even link to some of it. Heck, the BNP probably have some good stuff amongst all their twisted, hateful policies too. But the fact is the Bible tells you to follow it. All of it. To the letter. And it includes a lot of bad stuff. Put simply, the good stuff does not justify the bad stuff. To say otherwise is to argue that it's okay for me to rape and murder, because I also help old ladies cross the road, and rescue cats from trees.

Funny though. At the start of this you accused me of being afraid of the Bible. I hope I have demonstrated by now that I am very familiar and comfortable with it as a subject. I suspect, however, it is you who is afraid. After all, you dismiss any problems with a wave of the hand and an "Oh, I'm sure there's an answer somewhere. Probably. I hope"

Incidentally, I had a look at the link in your sig. I presume that it being in your sig indicates an endorsement of some kind by yourself. Aside from being generally hostile - and insulting - towards atheists, the first few paragraphs alone describing the book are so staggeringly flawed that I'd be here all day were I to go through them. Just one random example: Massive strawman on the nature of faith. I do not have faith when I turn on a lightswitch, eat cornflakes, drink coffee, or expect the sun to rise tomorrow. I have expectation based on previous experience. Faith would be believing something with no previous experience or evidence - for instance that when the sun rises tomorrow it will be green and square.

Anyway though, this is all way off topic, this is not the place, and I suspect this has run it's course anyway. If you're interested in persuing any of it further, you might want to head on over to www.infidelguy.com - don't let the name put you off, it's not a Christian bashing site - it's a place for people of all (and no) faith to discuss and debate religion in the light of critical analysis.

Sure.. here's two invaluable resources for you:
Firstly, talkorigins.org - it'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know (and more!) about evolution, and how/why it can stand up to all the claims and accusations creationism throws at it.

Also, the Skeptic's Annotated Bible is a wonderful resource, detailing all the flaws, errors, contradictions, fallacies, and other nonsense in the bible. Critically, the actual bible part is a 100% genuine, unaltered King James Version bible, so nobody can pick fault with it saying it's "not a real bible", etc. I'm not sure how much use this will be in the case of a Jehova's Witness (I don't know much about how their beliefs differ), but it's a great resource at any rate.

Finally, you might want to ask around in the forums at Infidelguy's site which is a site dedicated to these sorts of issues.

One superb show involving freethought and other religious topics, mostly from an atheistic stance (but we're all infidels), is available at http://www.infidelguy.com/ It's hosted by Reginald Finley, and is a long-running, deep, though small scale show.

On a more left-wing slant, people will knock on him for being old-fashioned and left-wing, but Al Franken does produce one entertaining show. You can get it, and other Air America shows at their unnoficial archive, http://www.airamericaplace.com/archive.php

Both of these shows are great to keep the mind working while going to and from work, without being too distracting in traffic. Tastes will vary, of course - but these shows work for me.

And as we all know, christians are cruel.

Ah. So it's not a basic human rights violation to limit the rights of linguistic minorities to conduct business or educate their children in their language of choice?

It's not a basic human rights violation to fine a person for placing an ad in a newspaper referencing -- not even quoting -- Bible verses that condemn homosexuality as amoral?

And don't get me started on the Notwithstanding Clause (i.e. "yeah, this law violates the Charter, but we really, really want to enact it anyway").

I like going to Canada, and there are some things Canada does better than the USA, but some Canadians need to get over themselves. Their self-righteousness stinks every bit as bad as its American counterpart.

How about:

- panel discussions from the H2K2 conference.

- a college course on SF and Fantasy literature.

- the DV Guys focus on the art and tech of video production. (Terrible bumper music. Just suffer through it)

- The Teaching Company has some fantastic for-pay courses on CD and DVD.

- Lastly, I gotta mention The Infidel Guy. The focus is on atheism, so it's not for everyone, but there are some great interviews in the archives with people such as Massimo Pigliucci, Michael Shermer, Paul Kurtz, and Michio Kaku. Lots of contorversial and thought provoking talk on the subject of religion, philosophy, and science.

I'm condemning a large group of people based on the actions of a large group of people throughout history, and much hasn't changed. I'm telling it like it is. Call it bigotry if you want.

Actually, most fundamentalists believe that not only is the earth 6,000 years old, but the universe is as well. Give or take a few days (whatever a day is in the bible).

The bible doesn't have any faults in it? Do you know what the word "elohim" means? In the original version of the OT, it means "gods", but it was translated to as "God". Yes, the ancient hebrews believe in many gods, not just one.

And tell me what truely righteous being becomes so enraged that their creations are sinning, and feels the need to wipe all but two of every kind out, and a small family, even though they're supposedly all knowing? Doesn't make sense does it? And he already knew that Noah was going to sin horribly, yet he acts surprised when he does. This "God" seems nothing more than a mere human. Yet when people attempt to understand his actions, people always say "you can't comprehend Gods actions, he's God". Funny how a "god" has some very human like traits. Funny how such a loving god is angry and destructive in the OT.

Oh, and that whole flooding incident, there's no record of it. What most likely happened was that the euphrates flooded (I can't remember which river to be honest, but I think it's the euphrates).

And just the mere notion of creationism is just insulting. I'm sorry, but I see no evidence that somoene was made from clay. Show me proof that man was made from clay. Can you do that? No. No one will ever be able to either. While people who believe in God poo poo on evolution, it's certainly more logical than creationism.

Here's another kicker for ya. God knew long before he created Adam, long before he created Eve, that they wouldn't last in the garden. For a being who is so perfect, he can't creat perfect things now can he? He creates man, allowing them to be fooled so easily. Then for some really odd reason, he leaves a tree in the garden that gives them the knowledge of good and evil. Now if you didn't want someone having some knowledge, wouldn't you try to keep them away from it?

Hell, I'll just give you the link for the inconsistencies in the bible as well.

I'm sorry, but the bible is insulting to everyone's intelligence. To believe everything it states is fact is sheer lunacy. It has problems, lots of problems.

If you're really interested in learning more fallacies in the bible, I suggest you go to http://www.infidelguy.com and sign up to the forums and ask out your hearts desire.

I'm not angry about anything, just annoyed.