Does finding life on another planet disprove religion?
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Playing devil's advocate, one could assert that the reason humans are born 'pre-programmed' to seek the divine is because we're part of it, and because God made us that way so that we couldn't easily forget our relationship to him/her.
Personally though, I'd say that while you have a point it doesn't address the fact that religious and spiritual practice often arises precisely because of an experience of 'the divine' rather than in spite of it. So a natural pre-disposition to needing belief in 'something' doesn't address the whole picture.
I wouldn't know; I'm not a Christian.
However, the point remains that just because a book isn't 100% factual as opposed to allegorical or other, it doesn't mean it isn't based on a kernel of truth designed to make a 'higher truth' more understandable and palatable to the people intended to read from it. So much was edited from the Christian bible over time (the Gnostic gospels and so on) that one can't really judge a book by its proverbial cover. Early Christianity, afaik, held beliefs of reincarnation and so on which was abolished by the various Councils when the teachings were amalgamated into a more coherent whole.
Whether the message has become distorted over time is debatable. That doesn't discount, however, the fact there may be underlying truth which is still provided for by the existing framework.
It'd take someone far more knowledgeable than me to answer you properly, as I simply don't know. I spent most of my life studying more Eastern philosophies.
That is a good post Lttlejoe, and a reasonable position to take. I hope you can see however why I came to the conclusions I did, given your previous vehemence in your position.
If the above is an indication of your intent, then consider my opinion of your motivations duly changed.
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That's good to know
I'd far rather debate an issue or subject with reasoned argument than resorting to verbal confrontation and name-calling or attempts at belittlement.
Personal attacks are invariably an indication of failing to get one's views across and a loss of the argument, no matter from which side one argues.
Yes I agree, I do tolerate other peoples beliefs but where do you draw the line?
To be honest most of the anti-theists, are doing it in a good cause. There are not many people attacking Deism,it's usually where Religion infringes on other peoples life's.
About your last point, skeptism should be applied proportionately to the unlikeness of the claim.Iron chariots explains it nicely.
Read this
And @Castiel, Wiktionary seems to suggest otherwise of the source of atheos.
From here
Here, that comes from
Here
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One phrase makes much of their argument invalid when attributed to belief and the burden of proof......."We are assuming to know what is meant by God"
So they are using just about every example of parody they can to push a scientific burden of proof onto a pre-assumed definition of God in an effort to validate their opinion.
As Semi-Pro Waster states what one person considers sufficient proof for their belief another would not, that doesn't assume that the burden of proof still remains, it just states that each has a differing opinion on what constitutes evidence.
Simply not having a belief in God requires no burden of proof, yet stating categorically that God doesn't exist then implies the burden of proof on those who state it.
The issue becomes then, a theist states God exists, they use a philosophical and theological point of view for their belief and they also have philosophical and theological proofs that back this up, now the Atheist who simply states that they do not accept that proof and requires a Material Scientific proof is entitled to do so, however if the Atheist then continues to say God doesn't exist and that the Theist is categorically wrong or deluded then he must say why, and he can do this two ways:
He can use philosophical and theological argument to refute the proofs put forward, this is rarely straight forward and predisposes a deep knowledge of the Religion in which those claims are made in that way, something that few atheists really have. This is the acceptable way in which to argue your position. You can see an example of where I used this technique to refute Islamic Interpretation in the Gog/Magog thread in SC.
Or, and this is the main way in which Militant Atheists refute beliefs using God, they use a scientific basis to argue a philosophical and theological position, they use, as do the chaps in the video, common negative parody and literal misrepresentation of core beliefs of any given religion, they also have to assume a specific definition of God, which is something few religions agree on and in fact many have no anthropomorphic God to begin with.
The problem is that all they are really doing is parodying religion based on stereotypes and literal interpretations of scripture that few members of religions actually hold, they ignore the simple fact that parodies such as the FSM and Flying Teapot hold no particular value in regard to religions as they have neither the provenance or reams of philosophical and theological thought on the concept of God, all they are attacking is the Term God which is effectively meaningless.
If they wish to assign a naturalist Scientific burden on the beliefs of a Theist, then they must be able to refute those claims with their own scientific proofs....something Science has not done, and something that many scientists including Eugenie Scott, whose video I posted earlier, are not convinced it can do.
Of course we have the creationists who use a scientific basis for their beliefs, it is then a valid response to invalidate their position using science (in this case Evolution) to refute their claims, but this is very limited in scope when applied to the wider philosophical question of "Is there a God".
Prof Robert Griffith's said “If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn’t much use.”
and this sums up what I think of attributing scientific argument to a philosophical position.
An atheist position is as equally valid a philosophical position as a Theist one, each holds their own proofs and reasons for their positions.
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You assume that the Bible is a single book, it is not, it is many books, including laws, allegory, history, philosophy and instruction.
Like Rainmaker said, the bible is not the only basis of Christian belief, it is not an instruction manual. It is simply a guide.
I don't know the problem with the Deuteronomy passage. I don't know your problem with the psalm. The Joshua bit is about a supernatural miracle, so all bets are off. Genesis 7 I don't know - I assume you reject the ark story wholesale, so why argue the details anyway. I think it mint be true on a local scale, or possibly global, or maybe it's just allegory as well. The point isn't the facts, but god's salvation of a righteous man. As for chronicles, I think we'll allow the ancient Hebrews a margin of error when they're measuring things in cubits. It all works to 0dp so who cares.
Deuteronomy 11:30, Psalm 19:4-6, Joshua 10:12 cannot agree in which direction the sun travels, or whether it is the sun that moves or the Earth and so on afaik.
Genesis 7:20 indicates that the flood was taller than Mount Everest ....
2 Chronicles 4:2 gives pi as 3 rather than 3.14..
Genesis 7:20 indicates that the flood was taller than Mount Everest ....
2 Chronicles 4:2 gives pi as 3 rather than 3.14..
That can be equally applied to many scientific theories such as Quantum Physics, Higgs Mechanism, Multi-verse, Holographic Universe and the list is endless...
Take Occam's razor for example:
To apply Occam's Razor you would need to make several assumptions, one that the hypothesis of God is more complex than other hypotheses, and that alternative interpretations of the nature of God such as Deism or Pantheism do not exist.
That would be rather difficult in light of Quantum Theory, Multiple invisible universes, string theory and so on.
If you applied Occam's Razor the logical and rational conclusion would be that there probably is a God, as that is the simplest explanation when compared to many of the others.
So it is not always that easy to apply such arguments to philosophical questions.
Atheist is derived from Atheos.....Theist is derived from Atheist. It is not derived from Theist with the [a] being the added prefix as the link suggested.
It has little bearing on the question at hand anyway, so would be a pointless exercise to debate the relative rules regarding etymology from English, Latin and Ancient Greek.
For the purposes of this debate Atheist was not derived from Theist as the quotation you supplied suggests and was in fact the other way around.
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Soldato
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Wow, i am blown away by your convincing argument.
So i am guessing your complaint is that 2*Pi*R = 2*3.14*5 = 34.5 != 30 . Shock horror, over two thousand years ago structural engineers made calculation errors. What exactly is a 'line of cubits'? Are we talking straight rulers or measured string? Its not like Nasa would ever try to put a square peg in a round hole or anything. Or maybe you actually believe there was a construction committee and the glaring problem was missed at a panel level? I mean, its not like this was just a bunch of blokes two millenia ago hacking down trees and lashing them together with twine. Drawing perfect circles on a chalk board in one go? Try drawing a perfect circle with a pile of timber. Yeah! Take that 21st century construction with your 'plans' and 'structural engineering'.
So the passage actually doesn't say anything about pi at all.
All of your examples are based on your own faulty and biased understanding of scripture which you are determined to believe false and therefore easy to find fault in. You have read it on the internet somewhere and decreed lol, its all bs, without actually giving a thought to what the words actually mean.
Congratulations, denizens of the 21st Century. We are oh so modern we find evidence that suits our predetermined beliefs on the internet than tout it as gospel truth. God forbid we should, you know, actually put a thought into it.
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look what religion does to all of you, wether you believe in it or not. it makes you argue. one side see's it with intelligence, common sense, fact/science/evolution based, and the other side is just believing in a dreamy fantasy. spirituality got mentioned, which is interesting, im ever the skeptic but that stuff is so right its quite scary. personality and thought pattern is set by the position of the planets at the time of birth. the difference between spirituality and religion is that one can be proven (by yourself) while the other cant. people ive spoken to about it have said its all rubbish(just like i would say about religion), so ive given them links to have a birth chart made and their like wow as they realise it really is true, i mean how can it list all the things you never tell anyone about yourself?? science has yet to find out why this happens. im eager to find out for sure.
thus you should never believe in something unless proven and im fairly confident religion will never be proved, only disproved.
what i dont understand is how people are saying stories in the bible are ficticious, yet still believe in god. is it the realisation that the bible and religion is actually bullcrap but take an egotistical stance and are struggling to accept the truth about reality? dismissing one part of religion after realising it is a fairytale, yet believing in the rest isnt right, either accept it fully or not at all, its a copout. faith should be renamed to dillusion also.
1,000 years ago id be burned alive for saying that, 2000years ago and id have hunted down this jesus dude, murdered him and wrote my own book of bullcrap and have millions of people beliving it, props to the dude tho, he suckered in more people than i ever could.
thus you should never believe in something unless proven and im fairly confident religion will never be proved, only disproved.
what i dont understand is how people are saying stories in the bible are ficticious, yet still believe in god. is it the realisation that the bible and religion is actually bullcrap but take an egotistical stance and are struggling to accept the truth about reality? dismissing one part of religion after realising it is a fairytale, yet believing in the rest isnt right, either accept it fully or not at all, its a copout. faith should be renamed to dillusion also.
1,000 years ago id be burned alive for saying that, 2000years ago and id have hunted down this jesus dude, murdered him and wrote my own book of bullcrap and have millions of people beliving it, props to the dude tho, he suckered in more people than i ever could.
The NIV doesn't suggest any discrepancy in direction. Which translation is the skeptics bible or wherever you're cribbing from using? As for the earth moving round the sun or vice versa... The bible is not a science textbook, so why wod you expect it to be written in wholly scientific language? We all talk about the sun rising and setting, or being high in the sky, or whatever, all of which are technically erroneous. Besides, from a relativistic point of view, the sun does orbit the earth if we fix the earth as our frame of reference. Or more accurately, neither moves around the other anyway, by rather both orbit their common centre of mass.
rypt said:
No, it doesn't, as it doesn't indicate which mountains are being talked about. And before you leap in saying that the bible says the flood covered the whole world - the word for world can be understood to mean the world as they knew it, that they were aware of, i.e. the Middle East or thereabouts.
rypt said:
Which is correct to the nearest whole number. Last time I checked, the bible didn't state the accuracy to which it would give numbers.
really?
To me it's the wholesale slaughter of thousands/millions if you don't do as your told.
When dictators have their own little genocides against a group to "make the country safe/better for the chosen people" we don't focus on there "oh lovly that man is improving the lives of his people" we focus on the "holy **** he just massacred a bunch of people".
why should this be treated differently?
I think I'd get a headache from that kind of cognitive dissonance.
Edit: I'll call you back.
Soldato
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I got a headache from the posters inability to use the shift key :/ I never knew improperly formatted text was so painful to read until this day.
I still literally have no idea what he wrote, its impossible to read.
It's about how religion is ******** but astrology is OMGWTF AWESOME TRUE!
Because with if you assume that the bad that is done in the name of religion is directly attributed to that religion rather than the individual/group who used the religion for justification of his/their actions, you must then equally acknowledge the good that is done in the name of religion as being directly attributable to that religion instead of simply to the individual/group who used that religion as justification for his/their actions.
Religion is a tool, it can be used equally for good or ill, how the individual interprets scripture or justifies their faith is always the deciding factor, where one person may see justification for killing someone, another will see reason for helping someone.
(Forgive me for editing your post a little, just to make it scan a little better and make it easier to read, no disrespect is meant.)
That is true of absolutely any philosophical idea, each of us has a disparate view, even when a group generally follow the same belief structure they each have a slightly different interpretation of that belief.
This is a little disingenuous, it predisposes that those with faith have no justification for their personal beliefs, that is simply not true. Just because one group doesn't accept the evidence of the other, doesn't mean that one is based on intellect and common sense and the other is not.
What makes you say that?
What justification do you have to accept that belief in a God is illogical and lacking in substance and intellect, yet make a statement implying that our personality and individuality is predestined by Planetary Conjunctions at the moment of our birth?
So you accept specific evidence that Astrology is a valid and believable proposition, yet at the same time you automatically dismiss another's right to do the same with their faith.
Does that not strike you as hypocritical?
Also Spirituality and Astrology are not automatically the same thing.
Astrology is simply a pseudo-science based on the assumption that divination of facts about the future and about the nature of the individual and world about them can be determined by the position of the Planets and Zodiac.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology
Spirituality is a wide-ranging and comprehensive set of beliefs and experiences that span both the material and immaterial philosophical schools of thought across cultures and peoples the world over.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality
Astrology has been consistently debunked by Science, so by your own mantra you should also have no belief in Astrology.
Since the implementation of the Scientific Method by early Hindu and Muslim Scholars, Divination and in particular Astrology has been rejected by mainstream science and religion alike.
The Bible is a collection of scripture, it is not a a single book, more a collection of individual books, laws, allegories and histories that are intended to instruct and help Christians in understanding their faith, it is not the Qu'ran, which is attributed to God, it is a tool with which to explore their faith.
Jesus did not write the Bible, in my opinion Jesus would have been quite disappointed at what the Bible is and what is represents....however that is my personal opinion and is not intended to be derogatory toward those that follow the teachings within the New Testament.
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