do you truly believe that homo sapiens is a stepping stone for a new species? i believe that we keep ourselves from evolving into another species. we evolve as humans in changing our body's immunity to certain diseases by wiping out the disease entirely. however, in doing so, we make ourselves more susceptible to future disease that might be similar to the one we are immune to, while being different enough so that we are not immune. computer science has nothing to do with evolution. AI certainly will not become a species since it has no living tissue and will not be defined as an organism by biologists. there are no cells in a computer. AI is certainly not the next step in the evolution of our species. if that's what you're implying, you've got a lot to learn about evolution and i would suggest you take a class on evolution, or even a general bio class.
it would be a model of the original like you said. it would act like the original in all ways, but it would not be made of living tissue. what you're saying is like having a furby that could die if you didn't give it attention (of course we all want to kill those things). yes, the furby is a very crude example, but in the same respects it would be a "living thing" in that it would be merely a model on something natural, something made up of living tissue. should furbies have rights under the constitution? i don't think so. would you ever consider a furby to be equal to a living thing? most likely not. same thing goes for those keychain things girls used to carry around, i can't remember what they were called, but they were able to die if you didn't feed it.
i didn't miss the point. i think my parent poster missed my point. we can understand physics, and we do to a very high degree. we learned how birds fly, how to make an air-foil. human cannot fly because of physics.
my point was the limitations of our brain. how can we make something think if we don't understand how we think. we don't understand the process as it is very different in each and every individual. but because we don't understand this process, we cannot make something do it more perfectly than us.
but most importantly, even if i am proven wrong and we do make something like that, it should never be given the rights of a human as it is neither human nor animal nor living. that's my main point. we cannot equate an inanimate object with a living thing.
limitations of our brain are different than limitations of physics. physics says we can't fly, our bodies are not engineered that way. physics say we can't run that fast, our bodies were not engineered that way. our brain is something beyond physics. that's my point. our brain is nowhere near fully understood by science, how can we expect to make a computer to do that? we understand our body, we understand how things fly and move, we don't understand how we think and, more importantly, how we feel. that's what makes us intelligent, that's where we differ from machines and where machines will never equal us.
here's the thing. humans don't even fully understand how we understand things. we don't know how we learn. we don't understand how our brain completely works. there are a lot of really strong ideas on it, but it's not fully known. the brain is the most complex part of any living thing, and the human brain is more complex than any other animal. humans don't act like robots in the wild. most other animals do. can AI be given emotions? and how can we completely replicate a newborn baby with AI if we don't even completely understand how a newborn baby works. it would have to be under the care of a programmer if it would be "perfect". the only advantage computers have over humans is computational ability.
and how can you even say that you would give a computer the rights of a human? they don't have life. they are inanimate objects, that don't have feelings. and even if they were to have feelings, they wouldn't be real. they wouldn't be able to know why they are feeling that way. laws pertaining to the rights of human beings and other livign things are absolute in their coverage because living things breathe, living things think, living things feel, living things have emotions, living things are fragile. computers are not susceptible to the same things we are, disease, death, etc. computers are called computers for a reason, they compute. and that's how their feelings would be made up, that's how their decisions would be made. they wouldn't be able to make a decision on a whim. if an "aged" computer (assuming it was "raised" from "newborn" state like you say) were to come to a decision that had to do with something it's never dealt with, it wouldn't know what to do, it would probably crash. how would it decide what to do? it would have to be programmed with the new scenario that it never learned. it would not be human since it can't draw from morals.
chess is computation, doesn't make the computer more intelligent, it can just run computations faster, but hasn't the computer been beat the last couple times or it ended in a draw? i don't consider computation the main intelligence determining factor.
airplanes flying is a terrible example since flying occurred long before there were computers in airplanes, in fact it was humans that took care of the computations to make them fly. it's more physics that allow airplanes to fly and humans to stay grounded. and by your reasoning, birds, bats, and flying insects are more intelligent than humans.
but AI is assembled by humans. a corporation is many humans assembling together under one name (that of the corporation). it's a little different.
i personally don't think AI will ever be more intelligent than humans. there's a limiting factor in building AI and that's the human brain. though it might be as intelligent, it will never be moreso.
and the courts will never protect AI under the law and give them the rights of humans since they are not human.
there's also very solid evidence that the shroud is not a forgery. the only evidence i've heard that says it it a forgery is pollen from plants that were not in that area at the time of jesus. the shourd has moved a lot since that time, being able to pick up pollen.
explain the ship on top of mount ararat. though not totally proven to be a ship, since turkey won't allow anyone to go there, the aerial photographs of the area show a distinct ship-like shape. too perfect to be merely a rock formation.
and i believe the ark of the covenant is in a temple in israel somewhere. unless it's been destroyed by all the violence over there.
for one, i know may science people who are religious and believe in the creation.
second, i don't know any creationists, so i have not fallen for any propoganda, but it's pretty damn good.
third. we know cars existed before we saw the skid marks. we don't know what was here before the big bang, we can only hypothesize, and a hypothesis cannot be proved true. therefore, my hypothesis is that there is a god who created what was in the big bang. you can't prove me true, and it'll sure as hell take a lot to prove me wrong, more than this study on prayer which was hardly scientific. i can't prove myself true because you can't prove any sort of scientific hypothesis to be completely true. your deer analogy is hardly an analogy for what i'm talking about here. obviously you can't grasp that since you seem to believe that we haev proof of what was there before the the big bang, and if we do, great, then what was there before that? how did it get there? answer all those questions, no one has yet, nor do i think they will ever be answered no matter how advanced sciece gets.
then if you believe in the big bang, you believe in a religion. the religion of science. you believe that everything was just there, that nothing created it. science has not answered where everything came from. there was not a big bang of nothingness. if nothing blows up, nothing happens. so the evidence i want is where it all came from. i know for a fact science has not answered that and will never be able to answer that. you can study all the cosmology and physics you want, but it won't answer the big question of how it all was started, unless you believe it was just there, and that's a belief, just like my belief in god.
and just because science is there doesn't make religion a bunch of bullshit. i'm sure that a lot of those cosmologists and physicists are religious and belong to some faith that involves a god or gods. you can't go and tell me that they're all athiests.
as for the argument, you'll never agree with me because you're an athiest, i'm not, i believe in a god, so i'll never agree with you. i do not disagree with science. i don't agree that science should just go and do wahtever it wants (a lot of the genetic research is kind of sketchy), but i don't think science as a whole is wrong. the most important scientists in history were religious, are they to no longer be trusted in their findings? if that's the case, then all of modern science is not to be trusted.
so where did it all come from? the world will never know.
alright, i read that and the one posted by the other guy. i still don't see how my faith is doomed. i believe in both evolution and god. never said i didn't. i believe in both science and religion. the article states all these "natural" occurrences and how science has a way in "nature" to explain things and god is used to fill the gap. i don't even think about those gaps. who gives a crap about the gaps? i'm not a creationist, never said i was. but what is this nature you talk about? do you think that things were just here, always here, that the universe is infinitely old that it will never go away? it obviously can't be infinitely large if there's a so called "center of the universe". i know about matter and "anti-matter" and how the universe is pulsating from the center. i've heard all htat, but what's never explained is how it all came to be. you believe that it was just there, i believe that god was just there. it makes more sense for a metaphysical being to have existed than for something physical to always have been there.
the fact of the matter remains that just because science makes improvements and fills those gaps that keep faith in god alive doesn't mean that people will stop believing. there will always be gaps, they will not all be filled, there are many more that need to be explained than those that have been. humans are not perfect, they will never learn all the intricacies of a perfect world, a perfect universe.
i don't think anyone is a sinner unless they do something wrong and that is for whatever greater being out there that you may or may not believe in to decide, not for me. there's no need to force my beliefs on someone who is already firm in their own beliefs. i do not have a positive life altering occurrence that has to do with jesus or religion, it's just the way i was raise and that's why i believe what i do. i think it is immoral to force your beliefs on others and tell others they will go to hell or some other bad place just because you don't believe the same thing. my religion tells me this (christianity/catholicism) because jesus and god have said that they are the only judges. when someone walks up to you and starts preaching and tells you that you are a sinner and you will go to hell unless you start believing what they tell you to, they have judged you. it's not right.
i figured you were from the midwest or the "bible belt" of the united states with the way you described people forcing religion on you. from what i understand, most of europe is very christian, several countries very strict in their beliefs (see italy and the vatican, poland, and ireland for examples of strong catholicism and see greece and the eastern nations for orthodoxy). but i don't think that most europeans are likely to force it on you. i am pretty sure that's an american thing as i am almost positive that the whole born-again thing is only american. you never hear about evangelists in europe (less fundamentalist protestants there i think). plus i've been told by people who have lived there, grew up there, or just visited that europe is in general much more laid back than the united states.
i take offense to the same people. like i said, i have had many experiences with born again christians who say taht jesus is the only way to heaven. well, that knocks out a very large majority of the world's population from getting there, doesn't it. i believe anyone can get there so long as they live a good life. that is to be determined by actions. i never said what other people believe is wrong, nor will i ever. i don't believe in one true religion just because i am catholic. i believe that all the religions are fundamentally the same. they all say the same thing about attaining "salvation" through living a wholesome life. i'm not saying it's easy to get there, but it's possible for anyone to get there, including murderers and terrorists.
i had a feeling your only experience iwth christians were those type, and depending on where you are in the united states, that's the majority. in the northeast, it's much different. they aren't the majority, and it can be seen in the way people live their lives and go about their business. their life is not centered on church.
i'm not trying to push my beliefs onto you. believe it or not, there are some christians who do that. please do not associate me with those who do. i believe that is wrong and those people really piss me off. i have been approached by many christians saying that catholics are not christian and that i should go their way. debate ensues, no one comes out on top. whatever. i think this whole catholic church scandal is over. no one has come forward recently with accusations. the settlements have been made, i believe a portion of those making the accusations did it to get in on the settlement. do i believe that some priests did this? yes. do i believe that some of those accused did not? yes.
you're wrong. the foundation of the christian religion is not the bible. depending on what part of the united states you live in (assuming you live in the us), you may hear differently. these people are mistaken by the meaning of christianity. christianity means that you believe jesus is hte son of god and that he died for our sins on the cross and rose from the dead 3 days later. that's it. that's what makes christianity christianity. everything else is interpretation. super-fundamentalist christians (see: born-again) take the bible for face value, they read it and take it word-for-word as being the literal truth, not believing anything else. catholics, like myself take a much more liberal standpoint (if you can consider catholics to be liberal) on the bible. yes, it is the holy book of the religion and it contains the stories and guidelines which we try to live by. catholics do not by any means take the bible as literal truth, as had been said by the pope when he said that the first 7 days were not literal days. this isn't a cover story, it just shows how the pope realizes and understands that science is very important and can prove important theories. the story of the creation (the first 7 days) is not really meant to be taken literally (as we know from not-so-modern science). it forms the basis of working. it puts into place the sabbath day, the holy day that we rest and don't work. that's all it's there for. it gives us a day that we are to devote to worship of god.
of course, since you're an athiest, as i'm sure the majority of the slashdot community is, you won't even listen to my argument and can't make intelligent discussion about religion because you know nothing about it. you don't have to believe in a god to know about religions, but you obviously know nothing about them.
i actually work in a high school and i am going into education, much more rewarding. that resume is over a year old.
as far as the priest thing goes, i don't think they're all lying, but i don't think they are all telling the truth. they saw an opportunity to make money (god knows the church wouldn't let this go to trial).
as far as evolution goes, i know a lot about it. those are what my classes concentrated on. i don't think evolution sucks, i never said that. in fact, i said i know evolution happens. it happens everyday. new species are discovered everyday. i never knocked evolution. i don't think humans were derived from monkeys though. that's the one thing i don't believe. many physical similarities, but the brain is still much more complex, far too complex for it to have been evolution.
most of the bible was proven to be true. the ark of the covenant exists, containing the ten commandments among other artifacts. history (other than the bible) shows jesus lived and did rise from teh dead. the shroud or turin, though not proven to be true but not disproven, shows the wounds on jesus' body after being crucified. veronica's vail exists from the passion when he was on his way to being crucified. the happenings of the old testament have also been recorded in history other than from the bible. the story of noah's ark and the great flood appears in the koran as well as the bible and other holy books and in written history. so tell me how you can say that every word in the bible can be proved false. i just proved that it's all true.
i love how any conversation that involves religion ends up being about priests touching altar boys, and the fact of the matter remains that you can't really prove that any of that happened especially since they can magically forget about the molestation after they get a settlement from the church on the order of millions of dollars.
so i guess you know nothing about evolution, since you don't seem to be bringing anything up about it and just knocking religion. go back to your little no belief world and enjoy your miserable little life in a cubicle in the wonderful world of computers.
what's the cop out at the end? being charlie manson and then deciding to reform your life? although he has. the point of living a good life (i never said it had to be religious) is that you will be rewarded for it. every religion says this, not just catholicism. hindus believe in reincarnation. but they have the karma thing where if you live a bad life, you come back as an inferior being, if you lead a good life, you come back as something equal or better. the koran says something similar to catholicism (it says nothing about blowing up americans).
you have faith that you get into heaven. it was promised that if you live a good life, you will get there. why would you want to live a bad life anyways? you will get put in jail and punished by the law for it (and you will eventually get caught if you keep it up).
i have a degree in evolutionary bio. and i have taken courses in geology as well (nothing regarding the creation of the planet, but i have taken courses in it).
so you're saying i need to prove that god exists? i think that's what they were trying to do with the prayer thing, but they were going about it without considering all the things that have to do with religion, so to any believer, those results are null and void. just a bunch of junk, a waste of time.
i may not be a cosmologist, never admitted to being one. but the big bang theory has not been proven even mostly true. too many people who study science disagree with it.
evolution is also contested by many, but the fact of the matter remains that evolution happens. and being a catholic, i probably shouldn't completely believe in it, but i happen to be an evolutionary biologist. do i believe man was derived from the monkey? not completely. we have certain characteristics that are similar, but there is still the issue of the brain. the brain of the human is unlike any other animal in that we have the ability to reason. (many say emotion is part of it, but other animals have emotions as well, and it's very obvious if you have a pet, especially a dog).
and you still haven't told me why religion is a bunch of bullshit. you ahvent' proven to me why god does not exist. i don't intend to prove to you that he does exist since you obviously don't believe in him. i don't give a crap about the big bang theory. sure it's there, but it's just as far fetched as the belief in god. so where's the proof? where's the scientific evidence? you probably think i have a very unscientific mind, but you're completely wrong. i just happen to also have religious beliefs.
miniscule particles are not the least illogical. i like how you used miniscule as well. from what i've learned, "chaos" was a big mass of large particles that broke up into smaller particles.
and you can't prove or disprove either one, so either you go by religion or you go by pure science, and i can tell you that the majority of scientists don't agree with teh big band theory.
someone once told me a story... "a young vibrant enthusiastic scientist was riding on a train in france, looking for a seat, he sits down next to an older man praying the rosary. he says 'ahhh, the rosary, i'm a scientist, i don't believe in any religion, because it goes against anything i've been taught.' and he introduces himself to the man. the older man shakes his hand and says 'hi, i'm louis pasteur'."
whether or not this story is true, i don't know, but the fact remains that louis pasteur was a practicing catholic. in fact, the majority of the early scientists who came up with all the theories and rules that are the basis for everything that is science were practicing, believing members of some religion (many of the european ones were catholic).
so one can both believe in god and believe in science. and since the big bang theory is "just as ridiculous" as the idea that there is a greater being, it seems to me that those people that believe that is true are part of a religion as well.
you could have done without the last paragraph, no need to be derogatory towards a whole group just because of a few bad apples.
as for the repenting, it's more than just saying "i'm sorry" in that childish "i don't really mean it" voice. you have to be truly sorry and you will go to heaven. if you don't mean it, if you don't show it, you won't. plain and simple. and god (or whatever higher being) is the only judge.
the terrorists were not killing people in the name of their real religion. islam is a peaceful religion, not all too different from christianity and judaism. they were brainwashed into a distorted view that they were the superior people and their religion is superior to all others and they should kill all others. that's how it works. it's about power.
i also don't believe there is one true religion. i believe in my religion because that's how i was brought up. all religions have the same basic premises. you live a good moral life and you will earn salvation (whether it be heaven or being reincarnated as something good).
i am by no means a creationist. i do believe in evolution (if you noticed one of my other posts states that i majored in evolutionary biology). science and religion can coexist. hell, i probably wouldn't be alive if it weren't for science. so your premise that i am a creationist is wrong, and that link to ICR has nothing to do with my way of thinking.
i do use reason. i do not believe that the bible is word for word true (and again, i point you to my other posts where i have previously stated this). i do not believe the bible word for work, i believe it is meant for interpretation and i do interpret it. what do you think priests do when they say a homily after they read the gospel? they talk to the congregation about what the story means. the bible is not a word for word history book. parts of it actually happened, but a lot of it is story, meant to be interpreted. there's more meaning to it than what you see on the surface. that's why i don't agree with the hard core christians, those that say they are "born-again" that say the bible is the only way that we should read it and do exactly what it says. it's not true. if that were the case, this world would be pretty damn strange. it can't be true word for word as there are too many inconsistencies. there is also a lot of grey area in what the bible teaches, meant for interpretation. catholic priests will tell you this. the catholic church has admitted that the first 7 days in the bible could not have been 7 24 hour days. science has proven otherwise, but that's something physical, something that can be proven. dinosaurs were here for millions of years before any humans existed. i believe that. i don't believe they were here for a day and gone. people in the bible lived to be over 900 years old. is that possible? i don't think so. the bible was interpreted when it was translated. in order to get what it truly says, one would have to go to the very original authors and see what they wrong and be able to fully speak the language it was written in (hebrew, which i'm sure has changed over the years). then there's the dead sea scrolls which add to stuff. written in aramaic, the language jesus spoke, which doesn't exist anymore. they are said to be the writings of jesus himself. i don't fully agree with the catholic church, but at the same time, i do believe in the teachings. the bible is pretty outrageous if you read it for it's surface value. it's not meant for that.
there have been studies into certain bible stories, one of the great flood and noah's ark. history has shown that this great flood most likely happened, as the same story is also told in the koran and other ancient writings. and although this flood may not have covered the whole earth, it did cover that part of the world.
i believe in reason and logic, but i also believe in god and religion. i am not using blind faith to say what i said. i believe god created humans and animals and the world. i also believe that evolution exists and that many more species were created that way. i've studied evolutionary trees, i've seen ways different species are related. i know different species are "created" everyday. it's science, that has nothing to do with my faith. it doesn't go against what i believe or what the church teaches. saying that there was a big bang and all of the universe just came into being is just ridiculous though. something had to have been there first. how do you explain that? is the universe infinitely old? that's something that i won't believe until they can prove it. and i still hold true to my question. scientifically prove to me that the universe is infinitely old and that everything just came to be out of "chaos" because of a "big bang" and i'll believe it. i want some good proof though.
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do you truly believe that homo sapiens is a stepping stone for a new species? i believe that we keep ourselves from evolving into another species. we evolve as humans in changing our body's immunity to certain diseases by wiping out the disease entirely. however, in doing so, we make ourselves more susceptible to future disease that might be similar to the one we are immune to, while being different enough so that we are not immune. computer science has nothing to do with evolution. AI certainly will not become a species since it has no living tissue and will not be defined as an organism by biologists. there are no cells in a computer. AI is certainly not the next step in the evolution of our species. if that's what you're implying, you've got a lot to learn about evolution and i would suggest you take a class on evolution, or even a general bio class.
it would be a model of the original like you said. it would act like the original in all ways, but it would not be made of living tissue. what you're saying is like having a furby that could die if you didn't give it attention (of course we all want to kill those things). yes, the furby is a very crude example, but in the same respects it would be a "living thing" in that it would be merely a model on something natural, something made up of living tissue. should furbies have rights under the constitution? i don't think so. would you ever consider a furby to be equal to a living thing? most likely not. same thing goes for those keychain things girls used to carry around, i can't remember what they were called, but they were able to die if you didn't feed it.
i didn't miss the point. i think my parent poster missed my point. we can understand physics, and we do to a very high degree. we learned how birds fly, how to make an air-foil. human cannot fly because of physics.
my point was the limitations of our brain. how can we make something think if we don't understand how we think. we don't understand the process as it is very different in each and every individual. but because we don't understand this process, we cannot make something do it more perfectly than us.
but most importantly, even if i am proven wrong and we do make something like that, it should never be given the rights of a human as it is neither human nor animal nor living. that's my main point. we cannot equate an inanimate object with a living thing.
limitations of our brain are different than limitations of physics. physics says we can't fly, our bodies are not engineered that way. physics say we can't run that fast, our bodies were not engineered that way. our brain is something beyond physics. that's my point. our brain is nowhere near fully understood by science, how can we expect to make a computer to do that? we understand our body, we understand how things fly and move, we don't understand how we think and, more importantly, how we feel. that's what makes us intelligent, that's where we differ from machines and where machines will never equal us.
here's the thing. humans don't even fully understand how we understand things. we don't know how we learn. we don't understand how our brain completely works. there are a lot of really strong ideas on it, but it's not fully known. the brain is the most complex part of any living thing, and the human brain is more complex than any other animal. humans don't act like robots in the wild. most other animals do. can AI be given emotions? and how can we completely replicate a newborn baby with AI if we don't even completely understand how a newborn baby works. it would have to be under the care of a programmer if it would be "perfect". the only advantage computers have over humans is computational ability.
and how can you even say that you would give a computer the rights of a human? they don't have life. they are inanimate objects, that don't have feelings. and even if they were to have feelings, they wouldn't be real. they wouldn't be able to know why they are feeling that way. laws pertaining to the rights of human beings and other livign things are absolute in their coverage because living things breathe, living things think, living things feel, living things have emotions, living things are fragile. computers are not susceptible to the same things we are, disease, death, etc. computers are called computers for a reason, they compute. and that's how their feelings would be made up, that's how their decisions would be made. they wouldn't be able to make a decision on a whim. if an "aged" computer (assuming it was "raised" from "newborn" state like you say) were to come to a decision that had to do with something it's never dealt with, it wouldn't know what to do, it would probably crash. how would it decide what to do? it would have to be programmed with the new scenario that it never learned. it would not be human since it can't draw from morals.
chess is computation, doesn't make the computer more intelligent, it can just run computations faster, but hasn't the computer been beat the last couple times or it ended in a draw? i don't consider computation the main intelligence determining factor.
airplanes flying is a terrible example since flying occurred long before there were computers in airplanes, in fact it was humans that took care of the computations to make them fly. it's more physics that allow airplanes to fly and humans to stay grounded. and by your reasoning, birds, bats, and flying insects are more intelligent than humans.
but AI is assembled by humans. a corporation is many humans assembling together under one name (that of the corporation). it's a little different.
i personally don't think AI will ever be more intelligent than humans. there's a limiting factor in building AI and that's the human brain. though it might be as intelligent, it will never be moreso.
and the courts will never protect AI under the law and give them the rights of humans since they are not human.
there's also very solid evidence that the shroud is not a forgery. the only evidence i've heard that says it it a forgery is pollen from plants that were not in that area at the time of jesus. the shourd has moved a lot since that time, being able to pick up pollen.
explain the ship on top of mount ararat. though not totally proven to be a ship, since turkey won't allow anyone to go there, the aerial photographs of the area show a distinct ship-like shape. too perfect to be merely a rock formation.
and i believe the ark of the covenant is in a temple in israel somewhere. unless it's been destroyed by all the violence over there.
for one, i know may science people who are religious and believe in the creation.
second, i don't know any creationists, so i have not fallen for any propoganda, but it's pretty damn good.
third. we know cars existed before we saw the skid marks. we don't know what was here before the big bang, we can only hypothesize, and a hypothesis cannot be proved true. therefore, my hypothesis is that there is a god who created what was in the big bang. you can't prove me true, and it'll sure as hell take a lot to prove me wrong, more than this study on prayer which was hardly scientific. i can't prove myself true because you can't prove any sort of scientific hypothesis to be completely true. your deer analogy is hardly an analogy for what i'm talking about here. obviously you can't grasp that since you seem to believe that we haev proof of what was there before the the big bang, and if we do, great, then what was there before that? how did it get there? answer all those questions, no one has yet, nor do i think they will ever be answered no matter how advanced sciece gets.
then if you believe in the big bang, you believe in a religion. the religion of science. you believe that everything was just there, that nothing created it. science has not answered where everything came from. there was not a big bang of nothingness. if nothing blows up, nothing happens. so the evidence i want is where it all came from. i know for a fact science has not answered that and will never be able to answer that. you can study all the cosmology and physics you want, but it won't answer the big question of how it all was started, unless you believe it was just there, and that's a belief, just like my belief in god.
and just because science is there doesn't make religion a bunch of bullshit. i'm sure that a lot of those cosmologists and physicists are religious and belong to some faith that involves a god or gods. you can't go and tell me that they're all athiests.
as for the argument, you'll never agree with me because you're an athiest, i'm not, i believe in a god, so i'll never agree with you. i do not disagree with science. i don't agree that science should just go and do wahtever it wants (a lot of the genetic research is kind of sketchy), but i don't think science as a whole is wrong. the most important scientists in history were religious, are they to no longer be trusted in their findings? if that's the case, then all of modern science is not to be trusted.
so where did it all come from? the world will never know.
alright, i read that and the one posted by the other guy. i still don't see how my faith is doomed. i believe in both evolution and god. never said i didn't. i believe in both science and religion. the article states all these "natural" occurrences and how science has a way in "nature" to explain things and god is used to fill the gap. i don't even think about those gaps. who gives a crap about the gaps? i'm not a creationist, never said i was. but what is this nature you talk about? do you think that things were just here, always here, that the universe is infinitely old that it will never go away? it obviously can't be infinitely large if there's a so called "center of the universe". i know about matter and "anti-matter" and how the universe is pulsating from the center. i've heard all htat, but what's never explained is how it all came to be. you believe that it was just there, i believe that god was just there. it makes more sense for a metaphysical being to have existed than for something physical to always have been there.
the fact of the matter remains that just because science makes improvements and fills those gaps that keep faith in god alive doesn't mean that people will stop believing. there will always be gaps, they will not all be filled, there are many more that need to be explained than those that have been. humans are not perfect, they will never learn all the intricacies of a perfect world, a perfect universe.
i don't think anyone is a sinner unless they do something wrong and that is for whatever greater being out there that you may or may not believe in to decide, not for me. there's no need to force my beliefs on someone who is already firm in their own beliefs. i do not have a positive life altering occurrence that has to do with jesus or religion, it's just the way i was raise and that's why i believe what i do. i think it is immoral to force your beliefs on others and tell others they will go to hell or some other bad place just because you don't believe the same thing. my religion tells me this (christianity/catholicism) because jesus and god have said that they are the only judges. when someone walks up to you and starts preaching and tells you that you are a sinner and you will go to hell unless you start believing what they tell you to, they have judged you. it's not right.
i figured you were from the midwest or the "bible belt" of the united states with the way you described people forcing religion on you. from what i understand, most of europe is very christian, several countries very strict in their beliefs (see italy and the vatican, poland, and ireland for examples of strong catholicism and see greece and the eastern nations for orthodoxy). but i don't think that most europeans are likely to force it on you. i am pretty sure that's an american thing as i am almost positive that the whole born-again thing is only american. you never hear about evangelists in europe (less fundamentalist protestants there i think). plus i've been told by people who have lived there, grew up there, or just visited that europe is in general much more laid back than the united states.
i take offense to the same people. like i said, i have had many experiences with born again christians who say taht jesus is the only way to heaven. well, that knocks out a very large majority of the world's population from getting there, doesn't it. i believe anyone can get there so long as they live a good life. that is to be determined by actions. i never said what other people believe is wrong, nor will i ever. i don't believe in one true religion just because i am catholic. i believe that all the religions are fundamentally the same. they all say the same thing about attaining "salvation" through living a wholesome life. i'm not saying it's easy to get there, but it's possible for anyone to get there, including murderers and terrorists.
i had a feeling your only experience iwth christians were those type, and depending on where you are in the united states, that's the majority. in the northeast, it's much different. they aren't the majority, and it can be seen in the way people live their lives and go about their business. their life is not centered on church.
i'm not trying to push my beliefs onto you. believe it or not, there are some christians who do that. please do not associate me with those who do. i believe that is wrong and those people really piss me off. i have been approached by many christians saying that catholics are not christian and that i should go their way. debate ensues, no one comes out on top. whatever. i think this whole catholic church scandal is over. no one has come forward recently with accusations. the settlements have been made, i believe a portion of those making the accusations did it to get in on the settlement. do i believe that some priests did this? yes. do i believe that some of those accused did not? yes.
you're wrong. the foundation of the christian religion is not the bible. depending on what part of the united states you live in (assuming you live in the us), you may hear differently. these people are mistaken by the meaning of christianity. christianity means that you believe jesus is hte son of god and that he died for our sins on the cross and rose from the dead 3 days later. that's it. that's what makes christianity christianity. everything else is interpretation. super-fundamentalist christians (see: born-again) take the bible for face value, they read it and take it word-for-word as being the literal truth, not believing anything else. catholics, like myself take a much more liberal standpoint (if you can consider catholics to be liberal) on the bible. yes, it is the holy book of the religion and it contains the stories and guidelines which we try to live by. catholics do not by any means take the bible as literal truth, as had been said by the pope when he said that the first 7 days were not literal days. this isn't a cover story, it just shows how the pope realizes and understands that science is very important and can prove important theories. the story of the creation (the first 7 days) is not really meant to be taken literally (as we know from not-so-modern science). it forms the basis of working. it puts into place the sabbath day, the holy day that we rest and don't work. that's all it's there for. it gives us a day that we are to devote to worship of god.
of course, since you're an athiest, as i'm sure the majority of the slashdot community is, you won't even listen to my argument and can't make intelligent discussion about religion because you know nothing about it. you don't have to believe in a god to know about religions, but you obviously know nothing about them.
i actually work in a high school and i am going into education, much more rewarding. that resume is over a year old.
as far as the priest thing goes, i don't think they're all lying, but i don't think they are all telling the truth. they saw an opportunity to make money (god knows the church wouldn't let this go to trial).
as far as evolution goes, i know a lot about it. those are what my classes concentrated on. i don't think evolution sucks, i never said that. in fact, i said i know evolution happens. it happens everyday. new species are discovered everyday. i never knocked evolution. i don't think humans were derived from monkeys though. that's the one thing i don't believe. many physical similarities, but the brain is still much more complex, far too complex for it to have been evolution.
most of the bible was proven to be true. the ark of the covenant exists, containing the ten commandments among other artifacts. history (other than the bible) shows jesus lived and did rise from teh dead. the shroud or turin, though not proven to be true but not disproven, shows the wounds on jesus' body after being crucified. veronica's vail exists from the passion when he was on his way to being crucified. the happenings of the old testament have also been recorded in history other than from the bible. the story of noah's ark and the great flood appears in the koran as well as the bible and other holy books and in written history. so tell me how you can say that every word in the bible can be proved false. i just proved that it's all true.
then why haven't those who brought up the big bang theory proved it yet? when that happens, i'll agree.
i love how any conversation that involves religion ends up being about priests touching altar boys, and the fact of the matter remains that you can't really prove that any of that happened especially since they can magically forget about the molestation after they get a settlement from the church on the order of millions of dollars.
so i guess you know nothing about evolution, since you don't seem to be bringing anything up about it and just knocking religion. go back to your little no belief world and enjoy your miserable little life in a cubicle in the wonderful world of computers.
what's the cop out at the end? being charlie manson and then deciding to reform your life? although he has. the point of living a good life (i never said it had to be religious) is that you will be rewarded for it. every religion says this, not just catholicism. hindus believe in reincarnation. but they have the karma thing where if you live a bad life, you come back as an inferior being, if you lead a good life, you come back as something equal or better. the koran says something similar to catholicism (it says nothing about blowing up americans).
you have faith that you get into heaven. it was promised that if you live a good life, you will get there. why would you want to live a bad life anyways? you will get put in jail and punished by the law for it (and you will eventually get caught if you keep it up).
i have a degree in evolutionary bio. and i have taken courses in geology as well (nothing regarding the creation of the planet, but i have taken courses in it).
i can hold my own when it comes to evolution.
so you're saying i need to prove that god exists? i think that's what they were trying to do with the prayer thing, but they were going about it without considering all the things that have to do with religion, so to any believer, those results are null and void. just a bunch of junk, a waste of time.
i may not be a cosmologist, never admitted to being one. but the big bang theory has not been proven even mostly true. too many people who study science disagree with it.
evolution is also contested by many, but the fact of the matter remains that evolution happens. and being a catholic, i probably shouldn't completely believe in it, but i happen to be an evolutionary biologist. do i believe man was derived from the monkey? not completely. we have certain characteristics that are similar, but there is still the issue of the brain. the brain of the human is unlike any other animal in that we have the ability to reason. (many say emotion is part of it, but other animals have emotions as well, and it's very obvious if you have a pet, especially a dog).
and you still haven't told me why religion is a bunch of bullshit. you ahvent' proven to me why god does not exist. i don't intend to prove to you that he does exist since you obviously don't believe in him. i don't give a crap about the big bang theory. sure it's there, but it's just as far fetched as the belief in god. so where's the proof? where's the scientific evidence? you probably think i have a very unscientific mind, but you're completely wrong. i just happen to also have religious beliefs.
miniscule particles are not the least illogical. i like how you used miniscule as well. from what i've learned, "chaos" was a big mass of large particles that broke up into smaller particles.
and you can't prove or disprove either one, so either you go by religion or you go by pure science, and i can tell you that the majority of scientists don't agree with teh big band theory.
someone once told me a story...
"a young vibrant enthusiastic scientist was riding on a train in france, looking for a seat, he sits down next to an older man praying the rosary. he says 'ahhh, the rosary, i'm a scientist, i don't believe in any religion, because it goes against anything i've been taught.' and he introduces himself to the man. the older man shakes his hand and says 'hi, i'm louis pasteur'."
whether or not this story is true, i don't know, but the fact remains that louis pasteur was a practicing catholic. in fact, the majority of the early scientists who came up with all the theories and rules that are the basis for everything that is science were practicing, believing members of some religion (many of the european ones were catholic).
so one can both believe in god and believe in science. and since the big bang theory is "just as ridiculous" as the idea that there is a greater being, it seems to me that those people that believe that is true are part of a religion as well.
you could have done without the last paragraph, no need to be derogatory towards a whole group just because of a few bad apples.
as for the repenting, it's more than just saying "i'm sorry" in that childish "i don't really mean it" voice. you have to be truly sorry and you will go to heaven. if you don't mean it, if you don't show it, you won't. plain and simple. and god (or whatever higher being) is the only judge.
the terrorists were not killing people in the name of their real religion. islam is a peaceful religion, not all too different from christianity and judaism. they were brainwashed into a distorted view that they were the superior people and their religion is superior to all others and they should kill all others. that's how it works. it's about power.
i also don't believe there is one true religion. i believe in my religion because that's how i was brought up. all religions have the same basic premises. you live a good moral life and you will earn salvation (whether it be heaven or being reincarnated as something good).
i am by no means a creationist. i do believe in evolution (if you noticed one of my other posts states that i majored in evolutionary biology). science and religion can coexist. hell, i probably wouldn't be alive if it weren't for science. so your premise that i am a creationist is wrong, and that link to ICR has nothing to do with my way of thinking.
i do use reason. i do not believe that the bible is word for word true (and again, i point you to my other posts where i have previously stated this). i do not believe the bible word for work, i believe it is meant for interpretation and i do interpret it. what do you think priests do when they say a homily after they read the gospel? they talk to the congregation about what the story means. the bible is not a word for word history book. parts of it actually happened, but a lot of it is story, meant to be interpreted. there's more meaning to it than what you see on the surface. that's why i don't agree with the hard core christians, those that say they are "born-again" that say the bible is the only way that we should read it and do exactly what it says. it's not true. if that were the case, this world would be pretty damn strange. it can't be true word for word as there are too many inconsistencies. there is also a lot of grey area in what the bible teaches, meant for interpretation. catholic priests will tell you this. the catholic church has admitted that the first 7 days in the bible could not have been 7 24 hour days. science has proven otherwise, but that's something physical, something that can be proven. dinosaurs were here for millions of years before any humans existed. i believe that. i don't believe they were here for a day and gone. people in the bible lived to be over 900 years old. is that possible? i don't think so. the bible was interpreted when it was translated. in order to get what it truly says, one would have to go to the very original authors and see what they wrong and be able to fully speak the language it was written in (hebrew, which i'm sure has changed over the years). then there's the dead sea scrolls which add to stuff. written in aramaic, the language jesus spoke, which doesn't exist anymore. they are said to be the writings of jesus himself. i don't fully agree with the catholic church, but at the same time, i do believe in the teachings. the bible is pretty outrageous if you read it for it's surface value. it's not meant for that.
there have been studies into certain bible stories, one of the great flood and noah's ark. history has shown that this great flood most likely happened, as the same story is also told in the koran and other ancient writings. and although this flood may not have covered the whole earth, it did cover that part of the world.
i believe in reason and logic, but i also believe in god and religion. i am not using blind faith to say what i said. i believe god created humans and animals and the world. i also believe that evolution exists and that many more species were created that way. i've studied evolutionary trees, i've seen ways different species are related. i know different species are "created" everyday. it's science, that has nothing to do with my faith. it doesn't go against what i believe or what the church teaches. saying that there was a big bang and all of the universe just came into being is just ridiculous though. something had to have been there first. how do you explain that? is the universe infinitely old? that's something that i won't believe until they can prove it. and i still hold true to my question. scientifically prove to me that the universe is infinitely old and that everything just came to be out of "chaos" because of a "big bang" and i'll believe it. i want some good proof though.