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Given that we're still struggling to map out the Solar System the fact we haven't yet discovered God hardly seems a compelling argument...
Converting to Odinism, A polytheistic religion, was one of the best choices in my life so far. It made more sense to me, in the same way that you believe that God can't exist because of science and other facts.
The only people who seem to take the bible literally are fundamentalists and atheists
Well one equals out the other. They are Yin and Yang on the religious scale so to speak.
Fundamentalists use it to prove God, and Atheists use it to deny God.
It is generally accepted that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Given that Heaven will be a very large place containing billions of souls and legions of angels and other godly beings, it must be really far away for man not to have detected it already. Does this mean when one dies and goes to Heaven they must spend 100,000 years travelling towards paradise? One million year? Five hundred million years?
The bottom line remains that is wrong to compare atheism with fundamentalism or to suggest that since we do not know for certain whether there is a God or not both camps have a 50:50 chance of being true and should deserve equal credibility.
Not when all the evidence and rational knowledgeone we've acquired supports the 'no' camp and makes the 'yes' camp very highly improbable.
Why do they believe in the literal truth of Adam and Eve? But yes, I'd regard the heads of Catholicism as fundamentalists.
How the fuck do am i supposed to whether or how anyone gets to heaven? I'm not dead.
Its nothing to do with whether theres a 50:50 chance because frankly we don't know enough. Unless you think we've reached the ultimtate peak of knowledge you cannot put odds on whether there is a God.
Do gnomes exist? Who's to say they don't? Should gnome believers be given equal credibility as those who say there is not such thing?
You don't half talk nonsense sometimes. You’re putting a wicked twist on the very simple fact that when religious types start quoting The Bible, atheists quote the most nonsensical parts of greatest work of fiction right back at them, and rightly so. The non fundamentalists should be too acutely aware they are cherry-picking to cite anything from The Bible to defend their views. Moreover, your egregious attempts to equate fundamentalists with atheist are ridiculous and beneath you. Unless you’re willing to take The Bible literally it holds no more weight - and I’d say it holds a lot less - as a moralistic cue than any other work of fiction. And if I wanted to read a great work of fiction, I wouldn’t pick up The Bible or any other religious text.
We need to put the myth that staunch atheists and evangelical fundamentalists are of the same ilk, to bed. It’s a nonsense argument and a fallacy to purport that the two positions are in anyway comparable. Atheists don’t have a track record of suicide bombings, invading countries, kidnappings, ritual killings, and a whole host of other atrocities in the name of Atheism. They just don’t; so to claim the two are equal in their problematic tendencies is plain wrong. As far as I’m concerned the staunch atheists I’ve met have put a lot more thought into their position than the staunch religious types.
I don’t have an issue with people holding religious beliefs, far from it. However, to claim that belief in a deity has equal intellectual credence as non-belief is laughable.
A problem to society evolving, and coming closer to the truth, not a problem as in "they kill lots of people" as you seem to have interpreted it.
I suggest you might want to look at the Soviet union and China's (two officially atheist states) persecution of religion and their control over it.
I would also suggest to give a more balanced picture you note that some of the world's biggest charities are either explicity religous (eg Christian Aid) or were set up by religous groups (eg Oxfam). I've not noted they're being a charity called atheist aid. Many religous people are strongly involved in charities as volunteers.
But then that's the problem with fundamentalist atheists - they can't give a balanced view of religion :thumb:
Yet if this God is omnipotent, as the bible says then does he not have the power over the universe? And that doesn't explain why this all powerful god needed a day to rest.
But the bible specifically states that we are created in his image. If that was true then God would not have made women as they are not in his image (God= Male, Women obviously Female).
Yet it does not give this God the right to kill millions of people. Does it?
As for natural disasters, it has always been my belief that they are the Earth's way of trying to control out of control population levels and also as a warning that if we are so willing to destroy her then she will fight back with the force that she has. And I did not mention suffering specifically in this question did I?
It does not answer the question of who you believe has sinned more, You or an 'omnipotent' being that has killed millions of people? Good question dodge though :thumb:
The bible says that God made the world, put animals and men on it straight away. No reference to dinosaurs and no dinosaurs in paradise. Otherwise they would be mentioned wouldn't they?
There's a difference with a little bit of suffering and allowing 6 million people to die at the hands of the Nazi's. I can understand suffering yet allowing a war to ravage the entirety of Europe, to allow Genocide on this scale is not merely allowing suffering to happen. It is purely wanting Genocide to happen.
I'm not either of these. I am an Odinist, a norse pagan.
I do believe that there are world makers, just not one almighty one. Something that's perfect does not exist and has never existed and until it does, you shall not convince many people on or off this forum to believe otherwise.
And the big bang doesn't answer your question about the beginning of the universe?
And as for us all being unique, that is through different bloodlines mixing to have children. Unlike the Christian argument of all humans descended from 2 original humans.
As for the fingerprints being all different that is due to something called nature. If you haven't noticed Koala Bears have fingerprints and some have been found to be identical to some humans fingerprints. Not so unique then.
I do believe that it was created, but by the Big Bang rather than by an 'omnipotent' being. Antimatter can also prove the Big Bang correct so that is inconclusive. Look at the wording of Genesis though. It says that there was nothing in the beginning.
That also stretches out in that statement that no form of anything, including atoms, was present. This means that antimatter goes more for explaining the Big Bang which says that something was there in the beginning rather than nothing was there like in the bible.
Your ability to present a skewed version of the truth is remarkable; a talent of which The Daily Mail would be proud to claim their own.
Firstly, a secular state isn't an atheistic one. Secondly, acts committed by atheists aren't always commited in the name of atheism. I referred to acts explicitly committed in the name of religion - but let's not let the truth get in the way.
Ah ok, a few religious based charities levels playing field does it? Please.
"Not every act committed by religion is bad, so back off - mmmkay?"
I didn't choose secular states (which is the state being seperate from religion eg France) - I deliberately chose ones which were atheistic. In both China and the Soviet Union people were (and in China) still are persecuted because they were religous in a state which didn't/doesn't believe in religion.
If anyone is skewing arguments here it isn't me.
Firstly, Maoist China was indeed an Atheist state due to the total banning of religions at the start of it. And it committed some heinous acts. Do you want to tell the Taoists and Buddhists that they were assaulted, degraded and sometimes killed in mass not because Mao himself was an Atheist who hated religion, but because people commit violent acts for random reasons. That's garbage and you know it. It was done solely BECAUSE Mao and his cronies were Atheist.
The Soviet Union was similar in regards to certain religions.
Why stop at what atheists did to religious people? What about what Atheists did to people of other ethnic groups? Slobodan Milosevic is a good example of this
Secondly, acts committed by religious people aren't always commited in the name of religion.
If you think the statement I made here is false then you must also believe that all acts carried out by Atheists are done in the name of Atheism.
Oh so you're advocating that parents should be told how to bring their children up? How vile!
Before someone says something I'm not equating religious education with paedophilia. I'm simply illustrating the point that we as a society do appear to believe in some instances we can tell parents how they should or shouldn't bring up their children. The different of opinion obviously comes when trying to decide what is acceptable and what isn't.
I have always said I consider religious education a form of child abuse. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Richard Dawkins agrees with me
(In fact, if Dawkins had died just before I was born I might have started to believe in reincarnation, because reading The God Delusion was rather like seeing all my own thoughts and beliefs in print).
Also Cpt Coat Hanger. You brought out that only 1 in 8 figure, where was that source from? 7 in 8 people in this country do not go to Church regularly, they may put down their parents religion on a census but they don't go to mass regularly. In fact, the Catholic Church is soon to outnumber regular Church goers than Anglicans (the biggest org) in Britain. So how do your figures add up?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1386939.ece
But there is plenty of evidence that religious doctrine prejudices the mind. And it is simply not fair to programme children in such way.
Dawkins' book cites a very interesting experiment conducted by someone a few years ago. A particularly vicious story in the Old Testament was chosen and put forward to 2 groups of schoolchildren in Israel. The story tells of an army arriving at a place and killing everyone in sight in order to keep the land as their own. One group of children was told the story as it is in told in the Old Testament (i.e. the Chosen People conducting the atrocity because that's what God wanted) and an staggering 91% thought it was the right thing to do as it was the Jews' God-given right to do so.
Another group of children was given the same story but the names and background were changed. The children thought they were reading about some ancient Chinese emperor and his army slaughtering the locals. Interestingly, almost the same figure of 90% thought it was very wrong for the Emperor to do such thing.
This is just one example of how religion can warp the minds of even small children and make them see appalling genocide as actually an acceptable and even desirable thing- and yet if you remove the religious element in the story the children can see the atrocity for what it is.
I for one think indoctrinating small children with such stuff is not a good thing at all and should be avoided.
An interesting argument that - first you say you're not trying to equate religous education with paedophilia (which of course you are) but then you go on to state you think religous education is a form of child abuse.
When are you nominating richard Dawkins for beatification btw? are you going to wait until he's dead or break with tradition and do it whilst he's still around?
Did they also do a control - say a group of Brits being told about Rorkes Drift and us slaughtering zulus with and without the names removed. Otherwise it does not neccessarily say anything about religion and possibly a lot about nationalism and how we view our own people's history.
Yep. There are many kinds of child abuse. Psychologically abusing your child is a form of child abuse. Beating them is a form of child abuse. Yet they're not the same as paedophilia. I was merely illustrating the point that it is possible, and indeed accepted by almost everyone, to dictate what parents can or cannot do to their children.
But don't let that stop you jumping to conclusions.
Why use that example if you didn't want to equate the two - there are plenty of other examples you could use...
As I stated clearly I was just illustrating the point that it is both possible and widely acceptable to tell parents what they can do and how they can bring up their children.
There isn't an emoticon to describe my disbelief at this statement.
I think people can now safely ignore anything you have to say in this thread.