Good / Evil are relative and based on the situation. Good / Evil exist because human interaction exists and what some people consider good, others evil. In general an act is good if the majority of society deems it good, knowing the full truth, and an act is evil is the majority of society deem is evil, knowing the full truth.
That wasn't hard! So how can I judge Mother T, well simple, killing by societies standards is wrong and killing was her business, both directly and indirectly.
If you don't examine or investigate her work for the poor then on the surface it would seem very nice and loving. However she is responsible for killing millions of people in cold blood and for influencing change in countries which left millions more to suffer, in vile conditions. She was the direct result of children be killed, abandoned, discarded and orphaned. She paired up with crooks to steal money for the church and then gave none of it to the poor. She was literally worse and more evil then Hitler, she made Hitler look like nice guy, which to even be able to make that statement is beyond shocking.
I made a lot of bold claims so now let me defend them!
Her houses of the dying her camps for the sick where instead of being cared for with a decent standard, they were left in conditions that would have been unsuitable for prisoners. Each person in her care was given room no bigger then a cot, was not allowed to move outside that area and was restricted from recieving proper medical attention or even seeing friends / family. Through the horrible miss use of hygienic practices she allowed the spread of disease and caused those who would of got better to get worse. She would deny medical treatment to people who could of easily been treated by a doctor and instead she would let them die a painful death. She this for upwards of a million people, she made a million people suffer needlessly at the her hands and not once did the church step up and tell her to stop. Not once did God tell her to stop and not once did anyone get involved and take her out.
If she would of stopped there, she would already been labelled as one of the most evil humans to ever walk the earth, but she took it future. She used her grasp as a public figure to head to outlaw abortions and birth control. She had entire countries take away the rights of women because she was delusional. She left millions of women in the third world without the ability to get an abortion even after event like rape. She had governments ban birth control lead to the spread of STD's and leaving millions of children homeless and suffering.
Everything she did was evil, even speaking out against homosexuals. She bar none was one of, if not the, most evil humans of all time. She did this all under the eye of the church, who didn't once try to stop her, she was allowed to kill and get away with it and for no real reason. She was not a saint, unless she was the in the most literal sense a saint of the devil.
Any God which wouldn't stop that is no God I want to even acknowledge, and any organization which wouldn't bar that kind of activity and stop it, is no organization I want to be part out. Shocking how people aren't taught the truth, but at least now you know.
You're never going to listen to reason or logic, you've assumed Gods existence and can't provide any logical defenses for it. I've got to the root the problem, like many, you just assume God exists and have no reasons to back it. This is why you don't want me touching your theology because you know it's weaker then a house of card in the wind. It's only luck it's stayed up this long.
1. If God exists who created him? 2. If God exists why did he wait until 2000 years ago to interject into humanity? 3. If God exist why don't the different religions agree on it's nature? 4. If God exists why doesn't he answer prayer? It's been busted every single double blind study 5. If God exists why does he let suffering plague us? 6. If God exists why doesn't he fund his own church? 7. If God exists why didn't he stop Mother Teresa and her run of terror?
I can keep going, but a believe should be able to answer all these questions.
Actually your last point is wrong, God doesn't exist until shown otherwise and it's amazing that no one has ever been able to show otherwise. If you multiple all the evidence for God by a million, you're still left with nothing.
Please share with my the good reasons to believe in God and then the good reasons to believe in Islam, Christianity, Mormonism or what ever sect you prefer to pick.
Also you are 100% wrong on the health stats, because in every single double blind study ever preformed, religious dogmatism has never been shown to impact health, also in every single double blind study of prayer, there have been 0 benefits. There has never been a discernible, quantifiable statistic taken, that those without religious faith live shorter lives. My grandfather was deeply religious and yet he died before my other grandfather who is an atheist, and well that is completely anecdotal evidence, it rejects your facts. As I already stated, some Atheists will live longer then believers and some believers will live longer then Atheists, but that doesn't give credit to fact religious faith allows you to live long, it only means some people live longer then others. To do this test properly, you'd have to take at least 5000 religious believers and 5000 atheist, you'd have to lock them in separate rooms, one person to a room, take way all religious instruments and have at least 4750 Atheists die before believes. Then and only then would you be able to draw a conclusion, of course after running this test multiple times in parallel.
Some people are very happy to close there eyes and blindly worship without considering the facts, if that makes them happy or delivers a "cost-benefit" as you put it, then great. Some people are very engaged and calmed believing that a God cares for them, although I would argue that this shows a deep and disturbed need for attention, which could be better treated with medication then feeding the delusion. However if you like to worship the Christian God, or any God, the cool and go for it, just keep it in private and make sure that church pays taxes.
Now to break down the actual verse I posted, because you got it just a little wrong.
So they sent twelve thousand warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. "This is what you are to do," they said. "Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin." Among the residents of Jabesh-gilead they found four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan.
The Israelite assembly sent a peace delegation to the little remnant of Benjamin who were living at the rock of Rimmon. Then the men of Benjamin returned to their homes, and the four hundred women of Jabesh-gilead who were spared were given to them as wives. But there were not enough women for all of them. The people felt sorry for Benjamin because the LORD had left this gap in the tribes of Israel. So the Israelite leaders asked, "How can we find wives for the few who remain, since all the women of the tribe of Benjamin are dead? There must be heirs for the survivors so that an entire tribe of Israel will not be lost forever. But we cannot give them our own daughters in marriage because we have sworn with a solemn oath that anyone who does this will fall under God's curse."
Then they thought of the annual festival of the LORD held in Shiloh, between Lebonah and Bethel, along the east side of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem. They told the men of Benjamin who still needed wives, "Go and hide in the vineyards. When the women of Shiloh come out for their dances, rush out from the vineyards, and each of you can take one of them home to be your wife! And when their fathers and brothers come to us in protest, we will tell them, 'Please be understanding. Let them have your daughters, for we didn't find enough wives for them when we destroyed Jabesh-gilead. And you are not guilty of breaking the vow since you did not give your daughters in marriage to them.'" So the men of Benjamin did as they were told. They kidnapped the women who took part in the celebration and carried them off to the land o
You sound like a high school student who is 1/2 way through his / her first philosophy course. If you want to live in a bubble and deny that science can answer anything, then go ahead, except its a highly irrational view point to take. What you're trying to accomplish is to give me a work around for why you don't have to answer why there is a God but merely invalidate the question. Technically we can't prove anything, there is nothing you can say about anything when you break it all down, however, we don't live in a philosophy classroom, we live in the real world, and the real world makes testable, objectionable, observations about reality. So your point is you can't prove anything, so don't try and God exists? I need more on your rationality here.
If you don't want your religious belief to be mocked that back it up, start with proving the existence of God, or at least creating good enough reasons why he should exist and then work out from there. I will literally give you $1000 if you can come up with a single reason why God should exist that I can't rebut.
Technology has switched the child mind from being content with getting an answer in one day, to getting the answer in one minute, but on the other hand it allows children to focus there interests more in depth at certain areas and focus into them. For instance if a child like to program, then you'll notice they'll have a great attention span well they program. Where as a child into music would have there attention span put towards that. I wouldn't say that technology has shortened the attention span of children, it's merely refocused from a broad horizon down to more narrow sight lines.
So you stopped allowing student to distract themselves and there grades went up. Of course you have to wonder why students don't have the discipline to focus with electronics in the classroom, and no matter what I say, people will get mad so meh.
We need more tutorials like this, people who can break larger projects into steps for amateurs to follow. Well it might be no big deal for an embedded engineer to take a breadboard arduino proto to PCB and bootload it over ethernet, it would be for someone just starting out, well done:-)
I'm 100% against using race or gender as a first pass system for sorting HOWEVER, it's a private school, they can accept who ever they want to. If the government was flipping the bill for post secondary education then the story would be different but the second you are funded by the students, then you can the decision about which students you want to let in . If you really want to fix this issue, you need to conceil the identity of the student down to a numeric identifier.
I don't have a problem understanding the difference. You can't mock something who's basis rests on the ideals of childish, bronze age, superstition, which you kept to make sure the sun came up the next morning.
To your other point mentioned before, yes you can study anyone's theology such as Islam, FSM or Mormonism, but if you don't believe in God then you're just reading fairly tales and even if you do believe in God, you're still reading fairly tales.
I've studied Islam, Christianity, Mormonism, FSM, Pink Unicorn, Bacon and even made my own religion, trust my, they're all the same, at least FSM, Bacon, Unicorn and Docmur ( Mine), are funny and show the true stupidity of religious beliefs.
I didn't become an Atheist because and shed off the false beliefs because religion made sense, I did it because I finally noticed no one had answers, evidence, proof or any bleeping clue what reality was.
What was your point? You setup some weak hypothesis and then you tested them and got an answer, which is exactly what science does, it is a testing framework. However you make the hypothesis more exacting, you incompass more detail and you can answer bigger questions, such as "Where did the universe come from."
If you can find out how the universe came to exist and never once have to use the God excuse, then you start writing him off more and more. You can get to the point where there is no valid reason to believe in God and well that doesn't prove he doesn't exist, it makes no reason to believe in him, Welcome to modern science:-) God is dead, grow up!
This is going nowhere, I've been nice and tried to talk common sense but like a typical religious believer you've failed to grasp even simple concepts. I'm sure your God will explain it to you, but he'll have to exist first.
I'm probably going to regret engaging with a troll, but here goes:
Religious people are, on average, happier and healthier. This is supported by science. Participation in a religious community of any kind confers many significant benefits that are well supported in the scientific literature. So, it is not only rational to be involved, it is arguably irrational to abstain!
No, I'm not saying everyone should become religious. What I am saying is that a rational actor is someone who evaluates the impact of an activity on personal happiness and well-being, and continues to engage in those activities that increase personal happiness and well-being. A huge part of religion (of any kind, I'd warrant) can be appreciated with no belief whatsoever. Take an edict like "First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye" - this is a call to self-skepticism and forgiveness of the faults of others, which is a useful and beneficial message regardless of how you assess the reality attribute of the person who is recorded as saying it. I tend to value any activity that helps motivate me to be a more thoughtful/kinder/more honest version of myself, and religion regularly does that.
It is easy to ridicule an absurd strawman (I believe in a sky daddy because I'm ignorant of science), but it would be much more *rational* of you to realize that it provides meaning and value to the people who engage in it, and that perhaps there are reasons (hint: nobody REALLY goes to church because of fear of hellfire anymore) that all successful human cultures across history have accompanying religious traditions.
Religious people are, on average, happier and healthier.
This is completely false, you can't make this claim and defend it in anyway shape or form. Having a belief in God might make some people extreme happy and a belief that God doesn't exist will make others happy. On the healthier note, you also have that wrong. There has been zero correlation between health and religion. Well some Christians might live to be 105 years old, some atheists will also live to be 105 years old, the fact that one worships a child molester in the sky and the other doesn't, doesn't lead towards health, just as Christian dying at 20 years old and an atheist dying at 100 doesn't show the opposite.
No, I'm not saying everyone should become religious. What I am saying is that a rational actor is someone who evaluates the impact of an activity on personal happiness and well-being, and continues to engage in those activities that increase personal happiness and well-being
This contradicts your first point, as it might make me happier ( and it does ), to be an Atheist and it might make you happier to be a Christian, so if we sustain in our own areas of belief, then we will both see a correlation between mood and our actives.
A huge part of religion (of any kind, I'd warrant) can be appreciated with no belief whatsoever. Take an edict like "First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye" - this is a call to self-skepticism and forgiveness of the faults of others, which is a useful and beneficial message regardless of how you assess the reality attribute of the person who is recorded as saying it. I tend to value any activity that helps motivate me to be a more thoughtful/kinder/more honest version of myself, and religion regularly does that.
This also falls against your very first point, that religion helps you, but it helping you doesn't help me. In fact many people find religion is the exact opposite of thoughtful/kind and honest because so many of the holy texts are filled with absolutely gut wrenching filth and hate. It's a fact that the OT in The Bible, God tells man he can rape ltitle girls, and to show I'm not joking or making that up, c
If you asked me clarify religious theology, I missed that, so to be blunt, religious theology is just clarifying what "field" of theology I'm talking about, it's the theology of religion or Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, FSM and etc..
I mis-type'd again, I should not of said strong opinions as much as strong targeted opinions about important issues. Obviously having a strong opinion about an Xbox vs PS3 doesn't make you intelligent, but being about to argue opinions about the very nature of God, well I personally think that does.
Mocking a serious topic does not demonstrate intelligence. It's a rhetorical attack appealing to the emotions instead of a rational attack appealing to the mind.
It's not really a rhetorical attack:
1.
(in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.
synonyms: the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator, the Maker, the Godhead; More
2.
(in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshipped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.
The entire concept behind God is that something started the universe and rules over it, except that no one has ever shown any evidence pointing towards this thing, so it's a rather pointless and empty idea. If you were able to show me evidence for the existence of God then I wouldn't mock you, but you can't, no one has ever shown evidence, however I'm not close minded, so you or anyone is welcome to try!
I'm not changing the definition at all, I'm taking it at face value, I'll post it again to explain:
Theology: the study of the nature of God and religious belief.
The definition contains religion, so you need to define it first, which turns the full / proper definition into:
Theology: the study of the nature of God and the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
, Hence you apply theology after you already believe in God. It's printed right on the screen, but clearly we disagree on this point.
My point about not getting tax relief because of atheism is that we allow people who believe in a sky daddy to give money to a body who worships it and that body doesn't pay taxes, so why can't I say I believe in the power of purple cheese, sing some made up crap to it, spin around 3 times slowly and then not pay taxes either, it's the same concept.
Anyway if we're not going to agree, we may as well move past this thread, but at least it's been interesting.
The one thing I'll start off with, is we both have strong opinions on each side, which is a good thing as it generally shows intelligence, and to clarify, I'm not taking any attack at you personally, as this thread has gone on for some time, just want to make that clear;-).
You do realize I'm only arguing with your first two sentences, right? Because they're that embarrassing and nonsensical, and undermine any value in the rest of your post.
My first two points were
Religion is essentially "I believe in a sky daddy because I'm ignorant of science."
Theology is even worse, take Islam:
I use the term sky daddy to sound silly intentionally because I'm pointing out how silly the concept of God sounds to those who don't believe. At one point I did believe but after years and years of no answers and years and years of no reason to need that belief I dropped it. God, at least in Christianity is literally a father in the heavens, who should care about you, love you, welcome you home but then for some reason drown you in a flood and get mad at you for sinning because he created sin, it's ridiculous.
On my second sentence, I'm not backing down from Religious Theology, it doesn't matter which one you pick, I could of said Christianity, Mormonism, Scientology, FSM, Pink Unicorn, Bacon, Church of the Dude or anything really, I could of invented one on the spot. All religious theologies make claims they can't back up and won't back up, for instance I want a Christian to show me the Garden of Eden, or I want a Muslim to show me the magic horse Muhammad rode to heaven, or the Gold Plates, I mean It's perfectly fair for me as a non believer to ask a person of faith to show me the relics of there faith.
Someone who mocks religion with "sky daddy" is not lacking belief. He has a strong belief that no gods exist, such that he thinks those who believe in god are foolish and deserve ridicule.
This is a theology on the nature of god (does not exist!) and man's proper relationship to that understanding (mock the believer!).
I absolutely mock believers because they look like adults yet hold security blankets. I don't need to assure myself that I'm going to some mythical, magical, wonderful, home in the clouds for ever. The universe doesn't need to care about me and a possible creator doesn't need to care about me. I do have a strong belief that God doesn't exist because I've seen exactly 0 reasons to think otherwise. Even Christianity have exactly zero redeeming reasons to believe, to the point that the existence of Jesus is in question!
It's not ignorant. The belief in the nature of god comes before the religious practice.
"God is the universe, so clear mind and meditate to become one with nature."
"Gods are a group of squabbling deities, so sacrifice to them all and hope to not anger them."
"God is a single person, so worship him alone"
This comes with the problem of having to define the "God" or "Gods" you believe in, which plays into my mockery, I mean if a Christian says only one God exists, then a Hindu can tell me multiple Gods who come from one exist, I want to see them back that up with proof, which they never can. You could also claim God is the Universe but in that case, this is not what I'm talking about. I don't believe in meditation and I don't believe in oneness. Once you can extract God to a concept such as the universe then you can just flip it to what ever you want. God is the bottle of coke I'm drinking well I type this, or God is the box of cookies on my desk, at that point it doesn't stop.
You do not need to believe in the Christian God to understand and accept that the Bible claims that God exists and is an intelligent creator, and that this the book is the basis of Christian theology. You do not believe the Christian religion yet you described Christia
We can disagree but I don't agree to giving labels to process which aren't static, as for stepping on each others toe, that only happens when the teams don't talk, it only takes a minute for one team to email the other for a status update.
The worst teams I've ever worked on were the ones who enforced strong protocol, such as documenting everything , constant meetings, constant reviews, strict steps and all of that. Which is why I hold all processes are flawed, the best process is no process.
I had one team, years ago, where we flushed documentation out to the point where it really was pathetic, to the point where if you needed it to get there, you didn't understand in the first place and shouldn't get involved.
If you're not going to follow a strict guide then there is no point giving it name. You can claim I do waterfall development but I really don't fit into waterfall or agile. The less overhead you introduce into software developer the more enjoyable it is.
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Quoting the bible to defend God is like me quoting harry potter to define hogwarts. Grow up.
If you don't find the existence of Quarks meaningful but you can find a "meaning" in God, then you have serious issues.
Good / Evil are relative and based on the situation. Good / Evil exist because human interaction exists and what some people consider good, others evil. In general an act is good if the majority of society deems it good, knowing the full truth, and an act is evil is the majority of society deem is evil, knowing the full truth.
That wasn't hard! So how can I judge Mother T, well simple, killing by societies standards is wrong and killing was her business, both directly and indirectly.
If you don't examine or investigate her work for the poor then on the surface it would seem very nice and loving. However she is responsible for killing millions of people in cold blood and for influencing change in countries which left millions more to suffer, in vile conditions. She was the direct result of children be killed, abandoned, discarded and orphaned. She paired up with crooks to steal money for the church and then gave none of it to the poor. She was literally worse and more evil then Hitler, she made Hitler look like nice guy, which to even be able to make that statement is beyond shocking.
I made a lot of bold claims so now let me defend them!
Her houses of the dying her camps for the sick where instead of being cared for with a decent standard, they were left in conditions that would have been unsuitable for prisoners. Each person in her care was given room no bigger then a cot, was not allowed to move outside that area and was restricted from recieving proper medical attention or even seeing friends / family. Through the horrible miss use of hygienic practices she allowed the spread of disease and caused those who would of got better to get worse. She would deny medical treatment to people who could of easily been treated by a doctor and instead she would let them die a painful death. She this for upwards of a million people, she made a million people suffer needlessly at the her hands and not once did the church step up and tell her to stop. Not once did God tell her to stop and not once did anyone get involved and take her out.
If she would of stopped there, she would already been labelled as one of the most evil humans to ever walk the earth, but she took it future. She used her grasp as a public figure to head to outlaw abortions and birth control. She had entire countries take away the rights of women because she was delusional. She left millions of women in the third world without the ability to get an abortion even after event like rape. She had governments ban birth control lead to the spread of STD's and leaving millions of children homeless and suffering.
Everything she did was evil, even speaking out against homosexuals. She bar none was one of, if not the, most evil humans of all time. She did this all under the eye of the church, who didn't once try to stop her, she was allowed to kill and get away with it and for no real reason. She was not a saint, unless she was the in the most literal sense a saint of the devil.
Any God which wouldn't stop that is no God I want to even acknowledge, and any organization which wouldn't bar that kind of activity and stop it, is no organization I want to be part out. Shocking how people aren't taught the truth, but at least now you know.
Fine then I have one question will help me judge if you have any rationality.
Was Mother Teresa a good person?
Too bad such a set of rational answers would be wasted on you
In other words you can't and want an excuse.
You're never going to listen to reason or logic, you've assumed Gods existence and can't provide any logical defenses for it. I've got to the root the problem, like many, you just assume God exists and have no reasons to back it. This is why you don't want me touching your theology because you know it's weaker then a house of card in the wind. It's only luck it's stayed up this long.
1. If God exists who created him?
2. If God exists why did he wait until 2000 years ago to interject into humanity?
3. If God exist why don't the different religions agree on it's nature?
4. If God exists why doesn't he answer prayer? It's been busted every single double blind study
5. If God exists why does he let suffering plague us?
6. If God exists why doesn't he fund his own church?
7. If God exists why didn't he stop Mother Teresa and her run of terror?
I can keep going, but a believe should be able to answer all these questions.
Actually your last point is wrong, God doesn't exist until shown otherwise and it's amazing that no one has ever been able to show otherwise. If you multiple all the evidence for God by a million, you're still left with nothing.
Also you are 100% wrong on the health stats, because in every single double blind study ever preformed, religious dogmatism has never been shown to impact health, also in every single double blind study of prayer, there have been 0 benefits. There has never been a discernible, quantifiable statistic taken, that those without religious faith live shorter lives. My grandfather was deeply religious and yet he died before my other grandfather who is an atheist, and well that is completely anecdotal evidence, it rejects your facts. As I already stated, some Atheists will live longer then believers and some believers will live longer then Atheists, but that doesn't give credit to fact religious faith allows you to live long, it only means some people live longer then others. To do this test properly, you'd have to take at least 5000 religious believers and 5000 atheist, you'd have to lock them in separate rooms, one person to a room, take way all religious instruments and have at least 4750 Atheists die before believes. Then and only then would you be able to draw a conclusion, of course after running this test multiple times in parallel.
Some people are very happy to close there eyes and blindly worship without considering the facts, if that makes them happy or delivers a "cost-benefit" as you put it, then great. Some people are very engaged and calmed believing that a God cares for them, although I would argue that this shows a deep and disturbed need for attention, which could be better treated with medication then feeding the delusion. However if you like to worship the Christian God, or any God, the cool and go for it, just keep it in private and make sure that church pays taxes.
Now to break down the actual verse I posted, because you got it just a little wrong.
So they sent twelve thousand warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. "This is what you are to do," they said. "Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin." Among the residents of Jabesh-gilead they found four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan.
The Israelite assembly sent a peace delegation to the little remnant of Benjamin who were living at the rock of Rimmon. Then the men of Benjamin returned to their homes, and the four hundred women of Jabesh-gilead who were spared were given to them as wives. But there were not enough women for all of them. The people felt sorry for Benjamin because the LORD had left this gap in the tribes of Israel. So the Israelite leaders asked, "How can we find wives for the few who remain, since all the women of the tribe of Benjamin are dead? There must be heirs for the survivors so that an entire tribe of Israel will not be lost forever. But we cannot give them our own daughters in marriage because we have sworn with a solemn oath that anyone who does this will fall under God's curse."
Then they thought of the annual festival of the LORD held in Shiloh, between Lebonah and Bethel, along the east side of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem. They told the men of Benjamin who still needed wives, "Go and hide in the vineyards. When the women of Shiloh come out for their dances, rush out from the vineyards, and each of you can take one of them home to be your wife! And when their fathers and brothers come to us in protest, we will tell them, 'Please be understanding. Let them have your daughters, for we didn't find enough wives for them when we destroyed Jabesh-gilead. And you are not guilty of breaking the vow since you did not give your daughters in marriage to them.'" So the men of Benjamin did as they were told. They kidnapped the women who took part in the celebration and carried them off to the land o
You sound like a high school student who is 1/2 way through his / her first philosophy course. If you want to live in a bubble and deny that science can answer anything, then go ahead, except its a highly irrational view point to take. What you're trying to accomplish is to give me a work around for why you don't have to answer why there is a God but merely invalidate the question. Technically we can't prove anything, there is nothing you can say about anything when you break it all down, however, we don't live in a philosophy classroom, we live in the real world, and the real world makes testable, objectionable, observations about reality. So your point is you can't prove anything, so don't try and God exists? I need more on your rationality here.
If you don't want your religious belief to be mocked that back it up, start with proving the existence of God, or at least creating good enough reasons why he should exist and then work out from there. I will literally give you $1000 if you can come up with a single reason why God should exist that I can't rebut.
Technology has switched the child mind from being content with getting an answer in one day, to getting the answer in one minute, but on the other hand it allows children to focus there interests more in depth at certain areas and focus into them. For instance if a child like to program, then you'll notice they'll have a great attention span well they program. Where as a child into music would have there attention span put towards that. I wouldn't say that technology has shortened the attention span of children, it's merely refocused from a broad horizon down to more narrow sight lines.
Yep, but the parents and teachers should help the kids learn they don't need all the flushing, beeping an buzzing.
So you stopped allowing student to distract themselves and there grades went up. Of course you have to wonder why students don't have the discipline to focus with electronics in the classroom, and no matter what I say, people will get mad so meh.
We need more tutorials like this, people who can break larger projects into steps for amateurs to follow. Well it might be no big deal for an embedded engineer to take a breadboard arduino proto to PCB and bootload it over ethernet, it would be for someone just starting out, well done :-)
Hence why I said two sided coin, they should be looked at but they are all allowed to allow in who ever they want.
I'm 100% against using race or gender as a first pass system for sorting HOWEVER, it's a private school, they can accept who ever they want to. If the government was flipping the bill for post secondary education then the story would be different but the second you are funded by the students, then you can the decision about which students you want to let in . If you really want to fix this issue, you need to conceil the identity of the student down to a numeric identifier.
I don't have a problem understanding the difference. You can't mock something who's basis rests on the ideals of childish, bronze age, superstition, which you kept to make sure the sun came up the next morning.
To your other point mentioned before, yes you can study anyone's theology such as Islam, FSM or Mormonism, but if you don't believe in God then you're just reading fairly tales and even if you do believe in God, you're still reading fairly tales.
I've studied Islam, Christianity, Mormonism, FSM, Pink Unicorn, Bacon and even made my own religion, trust my, they're all the same, at least FSM, Bacon, Unicorn and Docmur ( Mine), are funny and show the true stupidity of religious beliefs.
I didn't become an Atheist because and shed off the false beliefs because religion made sense, I did it because I finally noticed no one had answers, evidence, proof or any bleeping clue what reality was.
What was your point? You setup some weak hypothesis and then you tested them and got an answer, which is exactly what science does, it is a testing framework. However you make the hypothesis more exacting, you incompass more detail and you can answer bigger questions, such as "Where did the universe come from."
:-) God is dead, grow up!
If you can find out how the universe came to exist and never once have to use the God excuse, then you start writing him off more and more. You can get to the point where there is no valid reason to believe in God and well that doesn't prove he doesn't exist, it makes no reason to believe in him, Welcome to modern science
This is going nowhere, I've been nice and tried to talk common sense but like a typical religious believer you've failed to grasp even simple concepts. I'm sure your God will explain it to you, but he'll have to exist first.
I'm probably going to regret engaging with a troll, but here goes:
Religious people are, on average, happier and healthier. This is supported by science. Participation in a religious community of any kind confers many significant benefits that are well supported in the scientific literature. So, it is not only rational to be involved, it is arguably irrational to abstain!
No, I'm not saying everyone should become religious. What I am saying is that a rational actor is someone who evaluates the impact of an activity on personal happiness and well-being, and continues to engage in those activities that increase personal happiness and well-being. A huge part of religion (of any kind, I'd warrant) can be appreciated with no belief whatsoever. Take an edict like "First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye" - this is a call to self-skepticism and forgiveness of the faults of others, which is a useful and beneficial message regardless of how you assess the reality attribute of the person who is recorded as saying it. I tend to value any activity that helps motivate me to be a more thoughtful/kinder/more honest version of myself, and religion regularly does that.
It is easy to ridicule an absurd strawman (I believe in a sky daddy because I'm ignorant of science), but it would be much more *rational* of you to realize that it provides meaning and value to the people who engage in it, and that perhaps there are reasons (hint: nobody REALLY goes to church because of fear of hellfire anymore) that all successful human cultures across history have accompanying religious traditions.
Religious people are, on average, happier and healthier.
This is completely false, you can't make this claim and defend it in anyway shape or form. Having a belief in God might make some people extreme happy and a belief that God doesn't exist will make others happy. On the healthier note, you also have that wrong. There has been zero correlation between health and religion. Well some Christians might live to be 105 years old, some atheists will also live to be 105 years old, the fact that one worships a child molester in the sky and the other doesn't, doesn't lead towards health, just as Christian dying at 20 years old and an atheist dying at 100 doesn't show the opposite.
No, I'm not saying everyone should become religious. What I am saying is that a rational actor is someone who evaluates the impact of an activity on personal happiness and well-being, and continues to engage in those activities that increase personal happiness and well-being
This contradicts your first point, as it might make me happier ( and it does ), to be an Atheist and it might make you happier to be a Christian, so if we sustain in our own areas of belief, then we will both see a correlation between mood and our actives.
A huge part of religion (of any kind, I'd warrant) can be appreciated with no belief whatsoever. Take an edict like "First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye" - this is a call to self-skepticism and forgiveness of the faults of others, which is a useful and beneficial message regardless of how you assess the reality attribute of the person who is recorded as saying it. I tend to value any activity that helps motivate me to be a more thoughtful/kinder/more honest version of myself, and religion regularly does that.
This also falls against your very first point, that religion helps you, but it helping you doesn't help me. In fact many people find religion is the exact opposite of thoughtful /kind and honest because so many of the holy texts are filled with absolutely gut wrenching filth and hate. It's a fact that the OT in The Bible, God tells man he can rape ltitle girls, and to show I'm not joking or making that up, c
I mis-type'd again, I should not of said strong opinions as much as strong targeted opinions about important issues. Obviously having a strong opinion about an Xbox vs PS3 doesn't make you intelligent, but being about to argue opinions about the very nature of God, well I personally think that does.
Mocking a serious topic does not demonstrate intelligence. It's a rhetorical attack appealing to the emotions instead of a rational attack appealing to the mind.
It's not really a rhetorical attack:
1. (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being. synonyms: the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator, the Maker, the Godhead; More
2. (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshipped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.
The entire concept behind God is that something started the universe and rules over it, except that no one has ever shown any evidence pointing towards this thing, so it's a rather pointless and empty idea. If you were able to show me evidence for the existence of God then I wouldn't mock you, but you can't, no one has ever shown evidence, however I'm not close minded, so you or anyone is welcome to try!
I'm not changing the definition at all, I'm taking it at face value, I'll post it again to explain:
Theology: the study of the nature of God and religious belief.
The definition contains religion, so you need to define it first, which turns the full / proper definition into:
Theology: the study of the nature of God and the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
, Hence you apply theology after you already believe in God. It's printed right on the screen, but clearly we disagree on this point.
My point about not getting tax relief because of atheism is that we allow people who believe in a sky daddy to give money to a body who worships it and that body doesn't pay taxes, so why can't I say I believe in the power of purple cheese, sing some made up crap to it, spin around 3 times slowly and then not pay taxes either, it's the same concept.
Anyway if we're not going to agree, we may as well move past this thread, but at least it's been interesting.
You do realize I'm only arguing with your first two sentences, right? Because they're that embarrassing and nonsensical, and undermine any value in the rest of your post.
My first two points were
Religion is essentially "I believe in a sky daddy because I'm ignorant of science."
Theology is even worse, take Islam:
I use the term sky daddy to sound silly intentionally because I'm pointing out how silly the concept of God sounds to those who don't believe. At one point I did believe but after years and years of no answers and years and years of no reason to need that belief I dropped it. God, at least in Christianity is literally a father in the heavens, who should care about you, love you, welcome you home but then for some reason drown you in a flood and get mad at you for sinning because he created sin, it's ridiculous.
On my second sentence, I'm not backing down from Religious Theology, it doesn't matter which one you pick, I could of said Christianity, Mormonism, Scientology, FSM, Pink Unicorn, Bacon, Church of the Dude or anything really, I could of invented one on the spot. All religious theologies make claims they can't back up and won't back up, for instance I want a Christian to show me the Garden of Eden, or I want a Muslim to show me the magic horse Muhammad rode to heaven, or the Gold Plates, I mean It's perfectly fair for me as a non believer to ask a person of faith to show me the relics of there faith.
Someone who mocks religion with "sky daddy" is not lacking belief. He has a strong belief that no gods exist, such that he thinks those who believe in god are foolish and deserve ridicule.
This is a theology on the nature of god (does not exist!) and man's proper relationship to that understanding (mock the believer!).
I absolutely mock believers because they look like adults yet hold security blankets. I don't need to assure myself that I'm going to some mythical, magical, wonderful, home in the clouds for ever. The universe doesn't need to care about me and a possible creator doesn't need to care about me. I do have a strong belief that God doesn't exist because I've seen exactly 0 reasons to think otherwise. Even Christianity have exactly zero redeeming reasons to believe, to the point that the existence of Jesus is in question!
It's not ignorant. The belief in the nature of god comes before the religious practice.
"God is the universe, so clear mind and meditate to become one with nature."
"Gods are a group of squabbling deities, so sacrifice to them all and hope to not anger them."
"God is a single person, so worship him alone"
This comes with the problem of having to define the "God" or "Gods" you believe in, which plays into my mockery, I mean if a Christian says only one God exists, then a Hindu can tell me multiple Gods who come from one exist, I want to see them back that up with proof, which they never can. You could also claim God is the Universe but in that case, this is not what I'm talking about. I don't believe in meditation and I don't believe in oneness. Once you can extract God to a concept such as the universe then you can just flip it to what ever you want. God is the bottle of coke I'm drinking well I type this, or God is the box of cookies on my desk, at that point it doesn't stop.
You do not need to believe in the Christian God to understand and accept that the Bible claims that God exists and is an intelligent creator, and that this the book is the basis of Christian theology. You do not believe the Christian religion yet you described Christia
We can disagree but I don't agree to giving labels to process which aren't static, as for stepping on each others toe, that only happens when the teams don't talk, it only takes a minute for one team to email the other for a status update.
The worst teams I've ever worked on were the ones who enforced strong protocol, such as documenting everything , constant meetings, constant reviews, strict steps and all of that. Which is why I hold all processes are flawed, the best process is no process.
I had one team, years ago, where we flushed documentation out to the point where it really was pathetic, to the point where if you needed it to get there, you didn't understand in the first place and shouldn't get involved.
If you're not going to follow a strict guide then there is no point giving it name. You can claim I do waterfall development but I really don't fit into waterfall or agile. The less overhead you introduce into software developer the more enjoyable it is.