Richard Dawkins sums up religion
- Thread starter Merlin5
- Start date
Tesla was also, by most accounts, nuts.
Scientific theories are regularly found to be untrue and are revised constantly. Studies unearth more and more weaknesses in previous theories and if a more viable possibility is found, it takes its place.
I personally don't believe in any science or religion entirely. I think there is a high chance that nobody knows how anything works, they just think they do.
I personally don't believe in any science or religion entirely. I think there is a high chance that nobody knows how anything works, they just think they do.
Science is a process, religion is a set of stories and principles. They are not mutually exclusive, and arguably science does not even require a belief system
It is all to do with the angle at which the suns rays hit the Earth. At the equator pretty much straight on, at the poles at shallow angle.
Cheers.
I personally believe God/Jesus does still speak to anyone who will listen. Though I also echo your fears of mindsets within the church, where pressure of peers to be fully enveloped in experience, can cause people to mimic true experience and can get caught it the false cyclic and cease to truly learn of Him.
The Universe is vast .. it's played an awful lot of dice rolls to land on Earth. Plus this is just the one Planet out of an infinitesimally small amount of planets just within the Milky Way we have so far mapped, both solar and extra-solar that we know life as we currently understand it, to exist.
Being within the goldilocks zone doesn't seem so rare or miraculous of a falling of the dice. The abundance of different elements of Earth, especially those congruent to life, isn't exactly ultra special or rare either. Hydrogen, Oxygen and Carbon are just about everywhere both on Earth and in the Universe. Nitrogen, Iron, Silicon are amongst the most common uncommon-elements. So the configuration of our spec of dust doesn't seem altogether that spectacular.
So just to get the rock for the drama to begin doesn't seem too far a stretch for any one galaxy to pull of a whole bunch of times. The conditions for abiogenesis and the sustaining of life over millions of years you could probably dissect better as how random and chance driven it would be, but I'd posit that the most common events are just going to alter life's course as opposed to being an un-winnable minefield of absolute extinction.
Your disbelief of those factors is also covered by the anthropic principle. We ultimately wouldn't be here to have this discussion if the Earth had developed like Venus or Mars.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 8 Nov 2006
- Posts
- 7,634
- Location
- Ireland/Northern Ireland Border
Here is a list of unintelligent people with thinking that is undeveloped, unquestioning, unevolved, archaic, based on superstitious claptrap and blind faith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_cleric–scientists
Soldato
- Joined
- 10 Mar 2009
- Posts
- 4,473
- Location
- South West
Yes, I have a vague notion as to how large the universe is, and it’s much bigger than what we currently realise I’m positive.
There well may be multiple planets like earth with tiny differences, but I fail to see how that would disprove my belief in God, quite the opposite in fact! My own personal view is there are no other inhabited planets in the universe but I wouldn’t be arrogant enough to say this is what the bible says as it doesn’t say either way so I’m not going to put words in God’s mouth. It would be fascinating if there were other inhabited planets!
I also think it’s fascinating to think about other dimensions and the implications found there. I’m not talking in the same way as the TV program ‘Fringe’.
Great Britain is no longer a Christian country to be honest. It may be its strongest influence but no longer do we have majority of Christian leaders. Ecumenism is the religion now. Infact the EU is going about to undo a great deal of our Christian laws.
Can I ask you a question – do you, and do many in Great Britain think that life is getting better? i.e. morally etc? I would suspect most people think things are getting worse. Yes, quality of life is probably better but at what cost. My point is the more Godless a society gets the more screwed up it gets – look at the USA, the most messed up country on earth yet would say it is a Christian country...
I’d take my hat off to you (if I was wearing one) that you've read the bible three times, more than most people have! I've now read a good deal of the Quran, dozens of gnostic works, various other Judeo-Christian works and dabbled a bit in the theory of evolution/atheism. I found Jesus in the bible, but to many that just means that either I’m deluded/brainwashed or stopped looking for something else.
Well I equally find it absolutely insane anyone cannot believe what is written in the bible but I wouldn’t say that to someone as ultimately it’s their decision. People far cleverer than me have gone out with the express purpose to disprove the bible and often ended up seeing how it proves itself; of course not all come to that conclusion. From a historical point of view there is nothing that can be disproved in the bible; if it had been disproved with actual evidence then I’d imagine we’d certainly know about it! Asking a Christian to prove something that is down to faith isn't the answer here (i.e. “you turn water into wine”); it has to be hard physical evidence disproving something in the bible, there is no such thing.
By the way I’m not disputing what you believe but it seems many (not all) atheists are happy enough to dispute or poke fun at people of other religions but simply except their faith (yes atheism is a belief system) by forming part of their belief through mis-information from the likes of Mr. Dawkins etc.
Oh Lord (< Pun), not this again.
To summarise
As to who wrote the beginning of the Bible, it was Moses, breathed by the word of God through his (Moses) hand. Simple
Thing is, if a loads of short stories, even over the last hundred or even 200 years were written down, it wouldn't be fiction. So why is the bible, when some of the stories in it span far shorter periods than 200 years.
To summarise
.....badly
As to who wrote the beginning of the Bible, it was Moses, breathed by the word of God through his (Moses) hand. Simple
Thing is, if a loads of short stories, even over the last hundred or even 200 years were written down, it wouldn't be fiction. So why is the bible, when some of the stories in it span far shorter periods than 200 years.
A lack of a belief system isn't a belief system.
I'm sorry that you feel at a disadvantage that you have to misrepresent people who don't share your belief - but it doesn't make it a fact.
But hey, if you want to pretend people who don't ascribe to any belief system have a reverse negative belief because it's easier to argue against then go nuts, but don't expect people to take your arguments seriously.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 10 Mar 2009
- Posts
- 4,473
- Location
- South West
You are actually missing my point - the chances of all these factors coming together over millions of years is simply more than chance or a combination of factors coming together.
Where did it all come from in the first place? It blows my mind to try and think that we all came from 'nothing' but where did the two nothings that kick-started all this come from, that made everything we have now?
You're clearly an intelligent person - you lost me on most of what you said, but my point stands, with the way even the human body is designed it is just unfathomable to see that this is by chance... to me at least.
Not sure what you're trying to prove with this? Most of those scientists lived a long time ago, in a time where religion was very common place.
As time has moved on, and basic principles in science are found, we have progressed our knowledge and no longer rely on religion.
Soldato
- Joined
- 18 Mar 2010
- Posts
- 4,189
The first gospels were written in Greek, not Hebrew so that doesn't make sense.
This argument is akin to the puddle of water, marvelling at how well formed the hole it resides in is to it's form.
Well I can link a couple of very interesting videos for you to watch on both of those points - they're quite long so set aside a couple of hours
Lawrence Krauss discusses 'A Universe from Nothing'
Richard Dawkins & Randolph Nesse having a conversation about the apparent 'design' of life.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 10 Mar 2009
- Posts
- 4,473
- Location
- South West
That's good, so I hope they would have explained the background to the Old Testament history, the captivity of Children of Israel and typology in order to understand the plagues of Egypt and their significance?
Of course these 'crazy' Christians believe in an unmerciful God that just kills for the sheer fun of it; there was no link with the Egyptians holding Children of Israel as slaves for hundreds of years beforehand, the torturing of them and their children and not to mention the hard labour. From Exodus 3 you couldn’t failed to noted that Pharaoh had the opportunity to let the Children of Israel go to avoid the wrath of God (i.e. rods turning into snakes) and after each subsequent plague Pharaoh had the opportunity to avoid the next. It would be plain to see that each plague wasn't God being unmerciful but this was a direct attack on the god's of Egypt, proving He is the one true God:
Plague 1 - Water into Blood - Egyptian god attacked: Hapi
Plague 2 - Frogs - Egyptian god attacked: Heka
Plague 3 - Lice - Egyptian god attacked: Geb
Plague 4 - Flies - Egyptian god attacked: Khepri
Plague 5 - Death of Livestock - Egyptian god attacked: Apis (sacred bull)
Plague 5a - Death of Livestock - Egyptian god attacked: Hathor (goddess of protection)
Plague 6 - Boils - Egyptian god attacked: Isis (goddess of medicine)
Plague 7 - Hail - Egyptian god attacked: Nut (Sky goddess)
Plague 8 - Locusts - Egyptian god attacked: Seth (god of crops)
Plague 9 - Dark - Egyptian god attacked: Ra (sun god - chief god)
Plague 10 - First Born Killed - Egyptian god attacked: Pharaoh
For example, the first God, ‘Hapi’, the ‘god of the Nile’ – by the water turning into blood this proved ‘Hapi’ was powerless as he was the god that caused the Nile to flood each year, depositing mineral-rich silt.