Partially. To be more accurate, repeated experiments and additional observations bring more data and allow us to refine our theories and models to be closer to the truth.
refute this, then, if the bible is 'so wise' beign so old.
Nope, the Bible is a book, and therefore isn't wise. Wisdom requires thinking, which can only be accomplished by human beings. Books can only provide data, they can't interpret that data.
the bible says that giants (??) were once on the earth:
yeah, and the last one of that size that became famous Died in 1993 and was a famous TV, movie, and professional wrestling star. This mutation of humanity, while perhaps miraculous to an ignorant savage as you'd put it, is surprisingly quite common. There's also a young lady in China right now dealing with the same genetic defect.
Those who believe are able to handle snakes and drink any deadly poison without suffering harm.
Yeah, and a sugar pill can get 50% of the people who believe it is a painkiller through the night without harm. So what? This is just the placebo effect, applied a little differently, but it's basically the same thing.
shall I REALLY go on and on with all the fucked up errors in the bible?
Go on all you like, but I wish you'd concentrate on the ones that are *really* errors if you try to test them from a scientific only point of view. I believe there's a passage in Isaiah that if you take it out of context talks about the four corners of the earth- in context it's just poetry.
(how much of an ostrich can you really be?)
A lot less than you if you think giganticism, though rare, doesn't exist, or if you think that the human mind can't affect biology within the body it is connected to. Come on, give me something HARD.
there is zero evidence about god
Once again, you've yet to prove that- you've yet to even touch the other scriptures I've mentioned, or the other cultures that you also have to consider if you're going to disprove the concept of a God.
but plenty about the PISS POOR JOB the bible did.
You're also going to have to work a lot harder than merely taking verses out of context and fundamentalist prooftexting to prove that one, since the Bible never claimed to be a science book OR the Word of God.
if this is the word of god
And it isn't. Gospel of John, Chapter 1, Verse 1 talks about "The Word of God" and that author ain't talking about a book that wouldn't even have a table of contents for another three centuries after that Gospel was written.
he's no god.
A wrong conclusion, since your if statment is false, your then we don't even get to, to put it in terms any slashdot geek who can code should understand. The Bible isn't the Word of God.
I'm not an physicist or an expert on quantum mechanics... but I don't think physicists are as convinced about things as you make them sound:)
Most aren't. It's a very few quantum physicist atheists who will claim that Hiesenberg's Uncertainty Principle means that NOBODY in the universe can measure both a position of an electron and it's velocity, and that means God's existence is impossible (because he'd be able to do this, being omniscient. Actually, any species able to do this could, with the help of computers, be omniscient.).
This wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] lists something like 17 different models of what quantum uncertainty *might* conceptually imply... the math works without us being comfortable with a sane conceptual interpretation.
First of all, this is one of the better wikipedia pages I've seen- but it has left out the 18th model that I'm talking about- the humility model. Probably because it's more philosophical, and because it provides an *equal* explanation to the other 17 (and the other 17 still work with it).
And science carries on without this arguably very fundamental question being answered, because *it's not science*, it's philosophy. There are people here that have gone down this philosophical road before MUCH better than I ever will, but basically science as it is defined is only concerned with testable conclusions.
I'll agree with that one. Rational religion is influenced by science, but is not science.
Scientists also tend (like all humans) to dabble in philosophy or religion occasionally, and it's easy to get *philosophical discussions about science* and *science* mixed up. You'll hear some scientists make bold claims about multiple universes or causality or free will... but it's mostly philosophical wankering (not that there's anything WRONG with that:).
Except when it leads to error. But to tell the truth- I don't see any way for us human beings to figure out if the universe is indeterministic or deterministic given the math we have. You either believe it's deterministic, in which case God becomes not only possible, but probable, or you believe it is indeterministic, in which case the very laws of physics we depend on in a macro world, are dependent themselves on random waveforms in a quantum world.
Anyway, the point is that I think most people who understand science don't think that science *replaces* philosophy or spirituality... quite the opposite. It is *woefully inadequate* to handle a whole class of very important questions about the nature of our universe... which is where religion and spirituality take over.
I'll gladly agree with that one. The grand majority are not atheists.
I'm not going to get into a deep discussion of "the nature of science" vs concepts like intelligent design... because others here have done it much better. Just know that when scientist types heavy-handedly discount religion in scientific discussions, it's not supposed to discount religion itself, or the utility of such a thing... just to keep it separate. They're not sticking their heads in the sand or anything... it's just that when you start letting more... fluid... things like belief structures enter into scientific discussion, you tend to arrive at good conclusions much slower.
I'd say slowing down good conclusions is a good thing in and of itself towards making sure good conclusions are truly good (and there have been some doozies in both science and theology in the past for anti-examples), but I'll be posting more on that on my personal blog soon as a rebuttal to both science and emergence evangelical theology.
The reason I felt the need to respond is that I used to be pretty anti-religious... until I met a lot of people which I have a great deal of respect for who are also quite rel
A superficial problem is that the "documentation", taken as a whole, is rife with massive contradictions.
Yes, but that's a pretty superficial problem; two descriptions of blind men meeting an elephant will be rife with massive contradictions also, as will the description of a high energy physics experiment by two physicists standing at opposite ends of the CERN Collider.
There's a more subtle and fundamental issue here though and that's the principle of parsimony / Occam's Razor.
The problem with Occam's razor is that it's pretty good for *small* problems, not so good for the big complicated universal stuff. It's also not very good when all the data isn't available, which whether you believe in a deterministic quantum universe or an indeterministic quantum universe, the one reality is that we as human beings are simply INCAPABLE of being able to know the difference between the two, God is Random.
Imagine I drop a penny in a can, shake the can up, and (without looking) assert that the penny is in the "heads" orientation. Well, it's 50/50 that I might be wrong and that I might be right. Now, imagine that I drop another penny in the can, give another good shake and assert (again, without looking) that both pennies are in the "heads" orientation. Well, now I'm down to a 1/4 chance of being right. So then I keep dumping in pennies until I eventually get 100 pennies in the can and I'm claiming all 100 pennies are in the "heads" orientation. Well, now my probability of being correct is one in two to the 100th power - not really great odds.
Only if you believe in an indeterministic universe. In a deterministic universe, some being someplace absolutely has enough information to tell you the exact orientation of *each* penny in the can. But that being ain't human, because we're stuck behind Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
So, what does this have to do with religion? Well, claiming that there is some kind of "god" entity (maybe just the collective consciousness of an advanced civilization) is like having one penny in the can.
Actually, given the ratio of atheists to theists over the last 2 million years of human evolution, it's more like having 89 pennies in a can of 100, but go on.
Then claiming that this god entity has some relationship with a "Jesus" entity - well that's another few pennies in the can.
Actually, now you're down to about 16 pennies in the can.
Then claiming that this god entity doesn't like gay marriage - well that's a few more pennies in the can.
Well, that would actually include a few atheists- because there's no difference between the God entity and the quantum random nature of the universe, but what we can know from biology is that human beings have two, and only two, genders except in cases of mutation away from the species, but I'll agree, maybe only 4 people out of 100 understand that, and a bunch of Christians are pro-gay marriage, so let's say we're down to 12 pennies in the can.
Then claiming that this god entity was in favor of the Iraq war - well that's a whole handful of pennies right there.
No, that's only like about 10 pennies overall, and they're 10 DIFFERENT pennies than the 12 previous.
By the time you work up to a full fledged religion, you've got yourself an entire 55 gallon drum full of pennies and you're claiming they're all heads.
No, that's an *irrational* religion. There's also rational religions out there, most have been around a lot longer than the mere 200 years the United States has or even the 500 years since the Reformation, that already know this- and none of them claim all the pennies came up heads.
Anyone who claims to believe an entire religion in its entirety is looking at astronomically low odds of being correct.
But what about those religions that are rational, that is, change on new evidence?
I can't even find your previous reply. Must have been someplace else.
Yeah, I have a tendency to do that...my belief in rational religion isn't limited to either my own religion or even my own beliefs, and in my common-to-cradle-catholics college years of apostasy, my 1500 WPM reading speed meant I learned a LOT about alternate philosophies and religions. I just love the "biblical athiest" elsewhere in this thread who seems to believe all of Christianity can be contained in the 15,000 denominations of American Evangelical Fundamentalism, who brought up that old saw about errancy of the Bible being proof that there is no God, coming to a Catholic who happens to have equal respect for the Tibetan Book of the Dead as the Bible.
Ah, but you see, as a Catholic who rejects Sola Scriptura, that's not Orthodoxy to me, or substance. Orthodoxy would mean having an actual liturgical service that teaches from action as well as words, substance would mean being deeper than just Scripture.
Regardless of how much I agree or disagree with his teaching, I admire the way he holds to his beliefs and isn't afraid to teach them just because it mightn't go down so well with the crowd.
And yet he's keeping with the Reformation, which is exactly what goes so well with American Individualism.
as is the fact of your apparent inability to find the [shift] key.
ah, you run out of actual arguments so you attack the person.
therefore, you have just lost the argument. and everyone can see that, too.
have a nice day;)
Yeah, thanks for giving me some actual substance to attack in your other message, like the idea that the Book of Daniel was written in the 2nd century AD when we have a Qumran manuscript that has been carbon dated to 500 BCE with the same text.
written documentation, as in written by men meant to control other men?
No, written documentation as in "I wrote what I experienced and you can either believe it or not as you please". Later on, some other men DID choose to use such writings to control other men- but usually, that was not the intent of the original author.
is that what you submit as proof?
How is it any different than taking down a set of observations during an experiment in a laboratory and submitting THAT as proof?
'documents' that have internal inconsistencies? like these, perhaps?
Or for that matter, like the recommendation to the American Medical Association to use Thalidomide to reduce morning sickness?
Having said that- I'm sorry, I've never believed *any* scripture to be inerrant. As far as the Bible goes, the one sect that edited it 1700 years ago doesn't call it inerrant, so I don't see why you should insist on in errancy being a requirement. It's just a record of what people experienced themselves, nothing more.
now that we are a bit more advanced than we were a few thousand years ago, we can STUDY the bible and realize it for what it is- a flawed document created by a team of MEN, over centuries
Only members of irrational religions ever claimed otherwise. The Catholic Church, before the split between Rome and Orthodoxy, created the Bible at the Synod of Hippo and didn't claim any different.
to control and scare fellow primitive man.
This is a conclusion unsupported by the evidence, however, and so I'd ask you to prove it.
there are sections in 'the bible' that the committees (yes!) decided to not include in the canon.
Yes, and there are sections of scientific history that a committee (YES!) decided not to include in your physics book, so what?
is this indicative of a 'god inspired' set of words?
Yes, in the same way a woman who recently gave birth inspired the Mona Lisa.
some words would be omitted??
Some eyewitnesses are indeed more credible than others, but personally I don't take that view. I find as much value in the Didache or the Gospel of Thomas or the Hindu Vedas or the Tibetan Book of the Dead or the Writings of the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism as I do the Bible. Some are more credible than others, but as Thomas Aquinas said and Vatican II agreed, the final arbiter is personal conscience.
flaws all over the friggin place. bible is full of contradictions and blatant errors.
So are most physics books, sad to say. Should we throw out physics as well?
only a clouded mind would be able to ignore such blatant errors once they are shown.
Or one that actually bothered to read the history and find out that most of those "errors" were invented in the 1700s and 1800s by so-called fundamentalist preachers who couldn't name more than 30 verses of the Bible by sight.
go read the bible errancy pages and see if you can still 'believe' after being SHOWN overwhelming evidence that the 'word of god' is just the word of a bunch of power-hungry men, thousands of years ago.
I see no evidence in any of these "errors" being about "power hungry men"- and I see at least THREE errors just in the titles of the page in comparison to modern archeology (hint, the dead sea scrolls have a copy of Daniel that has been carbon dated to 500 BC- 700 years before your stupid "errors" page dates it, though anybody who would believe the book of Daniel or any other book written by man is "prophetic" is a brain-dead idiot). Yes, I just said there is no useful prophecy in the Bible. At all.
so, I'm either unable to 'receive' god's message or witness his existence or I'm refusing to?
No, that's not what I said. I said so far your definition of objective evidence is too narrow to admit the mounds of written documentation from thousands of different cultures. There's a difference. Being "unable to 'receive' god's message or witness his existence or I'm refusing to?" is being irrational. Having too narrow a definition of objective evidence is merely being too skeptical.
typical avoidance reply. no, dude, I'm NOT trying to 'reject god'. if he's out there, he's been silent to me and that seems to make no sense at all (why would he be selective in how he 'talks' to?)
Well, gee, you're selective in who you talk to, aren't you? But no, I'm not even claiming that he's been silent in your life, only that your definition of objective evidence is too narrow to allow in evidence of his existence.
here's the real explanation: there is no god and no human has EVER experienced him.
That explanation is dismissed by the hundreds of thousands of pages of written documentation from disparate cultures around the globe. You are claiming that the experience of literally *billions* of people doesn't exist merely because you have too narrow a definition of objective evidence. I take it back, you're irrational and the very nutcase that you claim believers are.
the fact that you are deluded to think any god 'did' show himself means you already are beyond thinking critically about the subject.
And the fact that you don't at least read and test written documentation mans that you are already accepting too narrow a definition of evidence.
you are hooked and can't get out of that trap.
I can say the same about you
sorry to be you. otoh, ignorance is bliss and you may actually be happier in your delusion than I am in the knowledge that its all a lie.
Knowledge is arrogance. The most rational thing any scientist, philosopher, or theologian can be is humble enough to admit they don't have all the answers.
it is all a lie. you just have been brainwashed into thinking the fairy tale is really true. sorry mate, but its not true. as much as we'd all want it to be, it just not. get over it.
Well, I've got my own subjective experience that says otherwise- and I've been forced to either admit I don't know everything, or believe based on that evidence. The fact that it isn't evidence to you says more about you than about me, as is the fact of your apparent inability to find the [shift] key.
which religion does not claim some supernatural being that, well, has NEVER shown himself?
No religion I'm aware of claims that. They all have either written or oral traditional claims of a God who *did* show himself.
ALL religion is opposed to rationality.
Incorrect- in fact, the current Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, gave a rather interesting speech on the topic right after he was elected Pope. You ought to remember, it was the one where he condemned certain sects of Islam for being irrational.
if you are a religion, you have a deity (or plural). and I don't think there has been the tiniest shred of actual evidence to support ANY one's view of their god.
Now that depends on your definition of "actual evidence" and how irrational or rational you are in accepting evidence. I can define objective evidence so narrowly that nothing I haven't experienced personally exists, or so broadly that I actually accept eyewitness testimony, and both are correct as far as the word "actual" goes.
therefore, to believe in things you can't possibly prove - by definition - is to be irrational.
Equally, to disbelieve in things I've experienced in my own life, would likewise be irrational, no?
scientists who tend to believe in god have this weird duality to their mind. seems to be a flaw that lets them 'forgive' some bizarre unprovable things that they just won't give up.
Or rather, they've been presented with evidence through personal experience that you refuse to admit is evidence. I think the second, that your personal definition of "actual evidence" is too narrow, is far more likely.
Goes one step further if you talk to the quantum physics/mechanics guys. They're convinced that their own inability to move beyond probabilistic answers is a *universal* inability to move beyond probabilistic answers, and thus we live in an indeterministic universe. They can't even admit to some other species somewhere in the universe knowing more than we do, let alone an all powerful God able to know more than we do.
I go one step further and put a limit on God. He can't alter the variables as he sees fit, they MUST fit the rules and causality consistently (even if, perhaps, we theorize a God that is outside of OUR time, and therefore isn't limited by time flowing the same direction we experience it in). I believe in a deterministic universe- but also that human beings preserve their own sense of free will because of their finite brain size that can't see all the variables all at once.
And what is left, when you take away the godless heathens, are orthodox people who can actually think and whose religion isn't opposed to rationality and science at every turn.
I fear it already does. Tony Jones, one of the "bright young minds" behind this, is currently twittering the Didache to his facebook page, and ended up having to ask me in a private e-mail "not to respond so fast".
Isn't that the basic description of 6th generation American Protestantism in general? After all, you can't fill the megachurch with actual *SUBSTANCE* or *ORTHODOXY*- or even suggesting maybe being poor *might* be the fault of certain other groups taking more than they need.
Children colouring in a terrorist attack... This doesn't worry anyone?
It doesn't worry me. Yes, it will probably desensitize them, but considering the overreaction our nation had to the killing of fewer citizens in a terrorist attack than we lose on the highways to drunk driving on a holiday weekend, I think we can use some desensitizing.
I was the ultimate undiagnosed Asperger's geek in high school. Now as a diagnosed Asperger's geek with some social networking skills, I'm heading up the committee for the 20th reunion. Crazy. And amazing how badly the person who "kinda wanted to help", a social butterfly from high school, can't handle the task I've given her to do the missing classmates search.
Not to mention server!=desktop. I think there's a natural ceiling on the server market. Somewhat larger than we have today, something less than IPV6 addresses available.
Or for that matter- one of my "thought inventions" that I really should patent- a porta-potty fuel cell with blades for methane and ammonia and a miniature self-contained composting system. It occurs to me golf carts and boats would be obvious uses.
Cue the person who creates an MP3 search engine using song snippets other people record from the radio to provide cheap downloads to cell phones- under the same argument such a service would be fair use.
Well, as somebody with an actual diagnosed condition, I've got to agree with you- but only halfway. I was eager to get my diagnosis because it shut my mother up from diagnosing me herself with (insert mental disability of the week) for the first 30 years of my life. It also gave me a good reason to be more comfortable with the friends I do have and the friendships I've been able to make. And it's given me new coping skills that have mitigated my stranger behavior, somewhat.
But yes, life is about HANDLING stuff, not avoiding it.
Slashdot Mirror
and you somehow think:
age == wisdom
Partially. To be more accurate, repeated experiments and additional observations bring more data and allow us to refine our theories and models to be closer to the truth.
refute this, then, if the bible is 'so wise' beign so old.
Nope, the Bible is a book, and therefore isn't wise. Wisdom requires thinking, which can only be accomplished by human beings. Books can only provide data, they can't interpret that data.
the bible says that giants (??) were once on the earth:
yeah, and the last one of that size that became famous Died in 1993 and was a famous TV, movie, and professional wrestling star. This mutation of humanity, while perhaps miraculous to an ignorant savage as you'd put it, is surprisingly quite common. There's also a young lady in China right now dealing with the same genetic defect.
Those who believe are able to handle snakes and drink any deadly poison without suffering harm.
Yeah, and a sugar pill can get 50% of the people who believe it is a painkiller through the night without harm. So what? This is just the placebo effect, applied a little differently, but it's basically the same thing.
shall I REALLY go on and on with all the fucked up errors in the bible?
Go on all you like, but I wish you'd concentrate on the ones that are *really* errors if you try to test them from a scientific only point of view. I believe there's a passage in Isaiah that if you take it out of context talks about the four corners of the earth- in context it's just poetry.
(how much of an ostrich can you really be?)
A lot less than you if you think giganticism, though rare, doesn't exist, or if you think that the human mind can't affect biology within the body it is connected to. Come on, give me something HARD.
there is zero evidence about god
Once again, you've yet to prove that- you've yet to even touch the other scriptures I've mentioned, or the other cultures that you also have to consider if you're going to disprove the concept of a God.
but plenty about the PISS POOR JOB the bible did.
You're also going to have to work a lot harder than merely taking verses out of context and fundamentalist prooftexting to prove that one, since the Bible never claimed to be a science book OR the Word of God.
if this is the word of god
And it isn't. Gospel of John, Chapter 1, Verse 1 talks about "The Word of God" and that author ain't talking about a book that wouldn't even have a table of contents for another three centuries after that Gospel was written.
he's no god.
A wrong conclusion, since your if statment is false, your then we don't even get to, to put it in terms any slashdot geek who can code should understand. The Bible isn't the Word of God.
I'm not an physicist or an expert on quantum mechanics... but I don't think physicists are as convinced about things as you make them sound :)
:).
Most aren't. It's a very few quantum physicist atheists who will claim that Hiesenberg's Uncertainty Principle means that NOBODY in the universe can measure both a position of an electron and it's velocity, and that means God's existence is impossible (because he'd be able to do this, being omniscient. Actually, any species able to do this could, with the help of computers, be omniscient.).
This wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] lists something like 17 different models of what quantum uncertainty *might* conceptually imply... the math works without us being comfortable with a sane conceptual interpretation.
First of all, this is one of the better wikipedia pages I've seen- but it has left out the 18th model that I'm talking about- the humility model. Probably because it's more philosophical, and because it provides an *equal* explanation to the other 17 (and the other 17 still work with it).
And science carries on without this arguably very fundamental question being answered, because *it's not science*, it's philosophy. There are people here that have gone down this philosophical road before MUCH better than I ever will, but basically science as it is defined is only concerned with testable conclusions.
I'll agree with that one. Rational religion is influenced by science, but is not science.
Scientists also tend (like all humans) to dabble in philosophy or religion occasionally, and it's easy to get *philosophical discussions about science* and *science* mixed up. You'll hear some scientists make bold claims about multiple universes or causality or free will... but it's mostly philosophical wankering (not that there's anything WRONG with that
Except when it leads to error. But to tell the truth- I don't see any way for us human beings to figure out if the universe is indeterministic or deterministic given the math we have. You either believe it's deterministic, in which case God becomes not only possible, but probable, or you believe it is indeterministic, in which case the very laws of physics we depend on in a macro world, are dependent themselves on random waveforms in a quantum world.
Anyway, the point is that I think most people who understand science don't think that science *replaces* philosophy or spirituality... quite the opposite. It is *woefully inadequate* to handle a whole class of very important questions about the nature of our universe... which is where religion and spirituality take over.
I'll gladly agree with that one. The grand majority are not atheists.
I'm not going to get into a deep discussion of "the nature of science" vs concepts like intelligent design... because others here have done it much better. Just know that when scientist types heavy-handedly discount religion in scientific discussions, it's not supposed to discount religion itself, or the utility of such a thing... just to keep it separate. They're not sticking their heads in the sand or anything... it's just that when you start letting more... fluid... things like belief structures enter into scientific discussion, you tend to arrive at good conclusions much slower.
I'd say slowing down good conclusions is a good thing in and of itself towards making sure good conclusions are truly good (and there have been some doozies in both science and theology in the past for anti-examples), but I'll be posting more on that on my personal blog soon as a rebuttal to both science and emergence evangelical theology.
The reason I felt the need to respond is that I used to be pretty anti-religious... until I met a lot of people which I have a great deal of respect for who are also quite rel
A superficial problem is that the "documentation", taken as a whole, is rife with massive contradictions.
Yes, but that's a pretty superficial problem; two descriptions of blind men meeting an elephant will be rife with massive contradictions also, as will the description of a high energy physics experiment by two physicists standing at opposite ends of the CERN Collider.
There's a more subtle and fundamental issue here though and that's the principle of parsimony / Occam's Razor.
The problem with Occam's razor is that it's pretty good for *small* problems, not so good for the big complicated universal stuff. It's also not very good when all the data isn't available, which whether you believe in a deterministic quantum universe or an indeterministic quantum universe, the one reality is that we as human beings are simply INCAPABLE of being able to know the difference between the two, God is Random.
Imagine I drop a penny in a can, shake the can up, and (without looking) assert that the penny is in the "heads" orientation. Well, it's 50/50 that I might be wrong and that I might be right. Now, imagine that I drop another penny in the can, give another good shake and assert (again, without looking) that both pennies are in the "heads" orientation. Well, now I'm down to a 1/4 chance of being right. So then I keep dumping in pennies until I eventually get 100 pennies in the can and I'm claiming all 100 pennies are in the "heads" orientation. Well, now my probability of being correct is one in two to the 100th power - not really great odds.
Only if you believe in an indeterministic universe. In a deterministic universe, some being someplace absolutely has enough information to tell you the exact orientation of *each* penny in the can. But that being ain't human, because we're stuck behind Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
So, what does this have to do with religion? Well, claiming that there is some kind of "god" entity (maybe just the collective consciousness of an advanced civilization) is like having one penny in the can.
Actually, given the ratio of atheists to theists over the last 2 million years of human evolution, it's more like having 89 pennies in a can of 100, but go on.
Then claiming that this god entity has some relationship with a "Jesus" entity - well that's another few pennies in the can.
Actually, now you're down to about 16 pennies in the can.
Then claiming that this god entity doesn't like gay marriage - well that's a few more pennies in the can.
Well, that would actually include a few atheists- because there's no difference between the God entity and the quantum random nature of the universe, but what we can know from biology is that human beings have two, and only two, genders except in cases of mutation away from the species, but I'll agree, maybe only 4 people out of 100 understand that, and a bunch of Christians are pro-gay marriage, so let's say we're down to 12 pennies in the can.
Then claiming that this god entity was in favor of the Iraq war - well that's a whole handful of pennies right there.
No, that's only like about 10 pennies overall, and they're 10 DIFFERENT pennies than the 12 previous.
By the time you work up to a full fledged religion, you've got yourself an entire 55 gallon drum full of pennies and you're claiming they're all heads.
No, that's an *irrational* religion. There's also rational religions out there, most have been around a lot longer than the mere 200 years the United States has or even the 500 years since the Reformation, that already know this- and none of them claim all the pennies came up heads.
Anyone who claims to believe an entire religion in its entirety is looking at astronomically low odds of being correct.
But what about those religions that are rational, that is, change on new evidence?
I can't even find your previous reply. Must have been someplace else.
Yeah, I have a tendency to do that...my belief in rational religion isn't limited to either my own religion or even my own beliefs, and in my common-to-cradle-catholics college years of apostasy, my 1500 WPM reading speed meant I learned a LOT about alternate philosophies and religions. I just love the "biblical athiest" elsewhere in this thread who seems to believe all of Christianity can be contained in the 15,000 denominations of American Evangelical Fundamentalism, who brought up that old saw about errancy of the Bible being proof that there is no God, coming to a Catholic who happens to have equal respect for the Tibetan Book of the Dead as the Bible.
this-is-what-the-bible-says-and-if-you-disagree-you're-wrong style
Ah, but you see, as a Catholic who rejects Sola Scriptura, that's not Orthodoxy to me, or substance. Orthodoxy would mean having an actual liturgical service that teaches from action as well as words, substance would mean being deeper than just Scripture.
Regardless of how much I agree or disagree with his teaching, I admire the way he holds to his beliefs and isn't afraid to teach them just because it mightn't go down so well with the crowd.
And yet he's keeping with the Reformation, which is exactly what goes so well with American Individualism.
as is the fact of your apparent inability to find the [shift] key.
ah, you run out of actual arguments so you attack the person.
therefore, you have just lost the argument. and everyone can see that, too.
have a nice day ;)
Yeah, thanks for giving me some actual substance to attack in your other message, like the idea that the Book of Daniel was written in the 2nd century AD when we have a Qumran manuscript that has been carbon dated to 500 BCE with the same text.
written documentation, as in written by men meant to control other men?
No, written documentation as in "I wrote what I experienced and you can either believe it or not as you please". Later on, some other men DID choose to use such writings to control other men- but usually, that was not the intent of the original author.
is that what you submit as proof?
How is it any different than taking down a set of observations during an experiment in a laboratory and submitting THAT as proof?
'documents' that have internal inconsistencies? like these, perhaps?
Or for that matter, like the recommendation to the American Medical Association to use Thalidomide to reduce morning sickness?
Having said that- I'm sorry, I've never believed *any* scripture to be inerrant. As far as the Bible goes, the one sect that edited it 1700 years ago doesn't call it inerrant, so I don't see why you should insist on in errancy being a requirement. It's just a record of what people experienced themselves, nothing more.
now that we are a bit more advanced than we were a few thousand years ago, we can STUDY the bible and realize it for what it is- a flawed document created by a team of MEN, over centuries
Only members of irrational religions ever claimed otherwise. The Catholic Church, before the split between Rome and Orthodoxy, created the Bible at the Synod of Hippo and didn't claim any different.
to control and scare fellow primitive man.
This is a conclusion unsupported by the evidence, however, and so I'd ask you to prove it.
there are sections in 'the bible' that the committees (yes!) decided to not include in the canon.
Yes, and there are sections of scientific history that a committee (YES!) decided not to include in your physics book, so what?
is this indicative of a 'god inspired' set of words?
Yes, in the same way a woman who recently gave birth inspired the Mona Lisa.
some words would be omitted??
Some eyewitnesses are indeed more credible than others, but personally I don't take that view. I find as much value in the Didache or the Gospel of Thomas or the Hindu Vedas or the Tibetan Book of the Dead or the Writings of the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism as I do the Bible. Some are more credible than others, but as Thomas Aquinas said and Vatican II agreed, the final arbiter is personal conscience.
flaws all over the friggin place. bible is full of contradictions and blatant errors.
So are most physics books, sad to say. Should we throw out physics as well?
only a clouded mind would be able to ignore such blatant errors once they are shown.
Or one that actually bothered to read the history and find out that most of those "errors" were invented in the 1700s and 1800s by so-called fundamentalist preachers who couldn't name more than 30 verses of the Bible by sight.
go read the bible errancy pages and see if you can still 'believe' after being SHOWN overwhelming evidence that the 'word of god' is just the word of a bunch of power-hungry men, thousands of years ago.
I see no evidence in any of these "errors" being about "power hungry men"- and I see at least THREE errors just in the titles of the page in comparison to modern archeology (hint, the dead sea scrolls have a copy of Daniel that has been carbon dated to 500 BC- 700 years before your stupid "errors" page dates it, though anybody who would believe the book of Daniel or any other book written by man is "prophetic" is a brain-dead idiot). Yes, I just said there is no useful prophecy in the Bible. At all.
so, I'm either unable to 'receive' god's message or witness his existence or I'm refusing to?
No, that's not what I said. I said so far your definition of objective evidence is too narrow to admit the mounds of written documentation from thousands of different cultures. There's a difference. Being "unable to 'receive' god's message or witness his existence or I'm refusing to?" is being irrational. Having too narrow a definition of objective evidence is merely being too skeptical.
typical avoidance reply. no, dude, I'm NOT trying to 'reject god'. if he's out there, he's been silent to me and that seems to make no sense at all (why would he be selective in how he 'talks' to?)
Well, gee, you're selective in who you talk to, aren't you? But no, I'm not even claiming that he's been silent in your life, only that your definition of objective evidence is too narrow to allow in evidence of his existence.
here's the real explanation: there is no god and no human has EVER experienced him.
That explanation is dismissed by the hundreds of thousands of pages of written documentation from disparate cultures around the globe. You are claiming that the experience of literally *billions* of people doesn't exist merely because you have too narrow a definition of objective evidence. I take it back, you're irrational and the very nutcase that you claim believers are.
the fact that you are deluded to think any god 'did' show himself means you already are beyond thinking critically about the subject.
And the fact that you don't at least read and test written documentation mans that you are already accepting too narrow a definition of evidence.
you are hooked and can't get out of that trap.
I can say the same about you
sorry to be you. otoh, ignorance is bliss and you may actually be happier in your delusion than I am in the knowledge that its all a lie.
Knowledge is arrogance. The most rational thing any scientist, philosopher, or theologian can be is humble enough to admit they don't have all the answers.
it is all a lie. you just have been brainwashed into thinking the fairy tale is really true. sorry mate, but its not true. as much as we'd all want it to be, it just not. get over it.
Well, I've got my own subjective experience that says otherwise- and I've been forced to either admit I don't know everything, or believe based on that evidence. The fact that it isn't evidence to you says more about you than about me, as is the fact of your apparent inability to find the [shift] key.
which religion does not claim some supernatural being that, well, has NEVER shown himself?
No religion I'm aware of claims that. They all have either written or oral traditional claims of a God who *did* show himself.
ALL religion is opposed to rationality.
Incorrect- in fact, the current Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, gave a rather interesting speech on the topic right after he was elected Pope. You ought to remember, it was the one where he condemned certain sects of Islam for being irrational.
if you are a religion, you have a deity (or plural). and I don't think there has been the tiniest shred of actual evidence to support ANY one's view of their god.
Now that depends on your definition of "actual evidence" and how irrational or rational you are in accepting evidence. I can define objective evidence so narrowly that nothing I haven't experienced personally exists, or so broadly that I actually accept eyewitness testimony, and both are correct as far as the word "actual" goes.
therefore, to believe in things you can't possibly prove - by definition - is to be irrational.
Equally, to disbelieve in things I've experienced in my own life, would likewise be irrational, no?
scientists who tend to believe in god have this weird duality to their mind. seems to be a flaw that lets them 'forgive' some bizarre unprovable things that they just won't give up.
Or rather, they've been presented with evidence through personal experience that you refuse to admit is evidence. I think the second, that your personal definition of "actual evidence" is too narrow, is far more likely.
Goes one step further if you talk to the quantum physics/mechanics guys. They're convinced that their own inability to move beyond probabilistic answers is a *universal* inability to move beyond probabilistic answers, and thus we live in an indeterministic universe. They can't even admit to some other species somewhere in the universe knowing more than we do, let alone an all powerful God able to know more than we do.
I go one step further and put a limit on God. He can't alter the variables as he sees fit, they MUST fit the rules and causality consistently (even if, perhaps, we theorize a God that is outside of OUR time, and therefore isn't limited by time flowing the same direction we experience it in). I believe in a deterministic universe- but also that human beings preserve their own sense of free will because of their finite brain size that can't see all the variables all at once.
For example, how can someone who believes in a creator of all things accept the law of conservation of mass?
As an inadequate human attempt to explain a rule set up by the given creator? And that without that rule, the universe would be quite different?
And what is left, when you take away the godless heathens, are orthodox people who can actually think and whose religion isn't opposed to rationality and science at every turn.
I fear it already does. Tony Jones, one of the "bright young minds" behind this, is currently twittering the Didache to his facebook page, and ended up having to ask me in a private e-mail "not to respond so fast".
Isn't that the basic description of 6th generation American Protestantism in general? After all, you can't fill the megachurch with actual *SUBSTANCE* or *ORTHODOXY*- or even suggesting maybe being poor *might* be the fault of certain other groups taking more than they need.
Children colouring in a terrorist attack... This doesn't worry anyone?
It doesn't worry me. Yes, it will probably desensitize them, but considering the overreaction our nation had to the killing of fewer citizens in a terrorist attack than we lose on the highways to drunk driving on a holiday weekend, I think we can use some desensitizing.
I was the ultimate undiagnosed Asperger's geek in high school. Now as a diagnosed Asperger's geek with some social networking skills, I'm heading up the committee for the 20th reunion. Crazy. And amazing how badly the person who "kinda wanted to help", a social butterfly from high school, can't handle the task I've given her to do the missing classmates search.
Backbone still isn't equal to desktop. I'll be impressed when Open Office is as ubiquitous as Microsoft office, and Gnome has replaced Windows 7.
Not to mention server!=desktop. I think there's a natural ceiling on the server market. Somewhat larger than we have today, something less than IPV6 addresses available.
FTA: "The project's goal is to prove that is possible to make a competitive racing car using environmentally sustainable and renewable materials."
I'd say their goal is to make sure no race car driver goes hungry during his 500 laps.....
Or for that matter- one of my "thought inventions" that I really should patent- a porta-potty fuel cell with blades for methane and ammonia and a miniature self-contained composting system. It occurs to me golf carts and boats would be obvious uses.
Heck, I think given this topic, we should be submitting UUencoded Mp3s to Turnitin....
Cue the person who creates an MP3 search engine using song snippets other people record from the radio to provide cheap downloads to cell phones- under the same argument such a service would be fair use.
Well, as somebody with an actual diagnosed condition, I've got to agree with you- but only halfway. I was eager to get my diagnosis because it shut my mother up from diagnosing me herself with (insert mental disability of the week) for the first 30 years of my life. It also gave me a good reason to be more comfortable with the friends I do have and the friendships I've been able to make. And it's given me new coping skills that have mitigated my stranger behavior, somewhat.
But yes, life is about HANDLING stuff, not avoiding it.