It must be easy to win these arguments when you can dictate the terms on which I must interpret my holy book.
Richard dawkins
- Thread starter NormanPorkinson
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It must be easy to win these arguments when you can dictate the terms on which I must interpret my holy book.
On the contrary, it must be easier for you to win these arguments when you can choose to ignore, change or even flat out abandon sections of your canon at will. Just out of interest, do you believe cross dressers are are doomed to burn in hell?
No. Well done for finding some bit of Levitical law that can be read that way.
Soldato
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Yes.
I wouldn't try bringing logic into this. Christians have moved beyond logic
/looks at how much religion can afford in works and looks and thinks what a business empire it is.
I have worked on houses for head nuns and no expense spared. Seriously, the church is minted and what if offers in relief and beliefs, is meh.
I have worked on houses for head nuns and no expense spared. Seriously, the church is minted and what if offers in relief and beliefs, is meh.
Man of Honour
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Maybe it's a difference of interpretation but science isn't answering the why (it didn't even ask the why), we agree that it appears there need not be a why. What science has answered is still how or rather one possible how. It would seem eminently sensible for a god to design an autonomous system for progression of the living elements of their World but just because it seems sensible doesn't necessarily mean that it is the case. It's fascinating to theorise about it but at the same time relatively unimportant.
Science and religion should be able to co-exist for the most part without any issue, they're frequently dealing with different questions and different pressures. There will always be some overlap and conflict but also much that they can either agree on or if nothing else not lock horns over.
I think you may have missed out the "a" before battlement which leads to an alternate interpretation - battlement(s) being a form of castellation (such a fantastic word) i.e. you must make defences for your home and if you kill someone while you are protecting it via those defensive structures then you are not spilling blood on your own house. That's a possible interpretation if the original quote is correct and I'm not completely misunderstanding it - without checking the context of the rest of the passage it is difficult to say.
Sorry, maybe I should have added a smiley after that post as it was posted, entirely in jest.
There was (probably) only one Big Bang, I don't think science would regard that as irrelevant.
Anyway, why does science need to disprove resurrection, surely religion needs to prove it?
Man of Honour
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Sorry, maybe I should have added a smiley after that post as it was posted, entirely in jest.
Whoops, totally passed me by.
To play Devil's Advocate as it were - evidence has been advanced for the resurrection (the Biblical stories), science now has the opportunity to rebut the claim. However while we can point to a lack of recorded successful resurrections after Christ that doesn't implicitly prove that it did not happen once - non-replicable conditions are bad for science and if it cannot replicate a scenario then it might simply be discounted as an anomoly.
For whatever it is worth I've got my doubts that Jesus died and was resurrected or at least not in the commonly thought way, he may have appeared to be dead and "came back to life" but I'd suspect was not actually dead in a clinical sense.
Religion doesn't have to prove anything. If you believe you take what the religion says on faith. Proof is not required
To dispute a religion from an atheist or scientific viewpoint however, you would indeed be required to prove your assertions to overturn that Faith or the Religion will, quite rightly, ignore you.
Therein lies the pointlessness of the entire arguement. Each are addressing a specific set of events using different philosophies.
I'm an atheist and so just cannot understand how evidence can be faith based, although I accept people's right to religious viewpoints.
And for me, to dispute science from a religious viewpoint would require religion to provide hard evidence for many of its claims, evidence that does not rely on faith since I will never have that faith. Otherwise I will, quite rightly, ignore those religious claims.
Nail on head. As you say, the argument is pointless as the basis for evidence for both parties are totally incompatible in my eyes.
Good point. On the one hand we have:
A few stories in a 2000 year old book by multiple authors, based on unreliable oral traditions, translated several times from its original language, and that we *know* has been heavily edited to fit in with prevailing fashions.
And on the other hand:
The fact that no one has EVER been able to demonstrate resurrection in the entire recorded history of science, despite serious efforts on the part of tens of thousands of people, and the collective desire of billions.
If anyone thinks that these two pieces of 'evidence' are in any way comparable, I think they are beyond help.
It does if it wants to be taken seriously. You can scream "fertilized eggs have souls!!!!!" until you're blue in the face, but until you can show some pretty incontrovertible evidence for it, that's not a good argument for preventing abortion.
If you want to say that religion doesn't have to prove anything, how do you dispute the claims from religions alternative to you own?
You say that there is only one God? Nope, actually there are thousands: Hinduism says so, and it doesn't have to prove it! You say that stoning someone to death is wrong? Sorry, Islam says it's okay! You don't think that Earth was seeded with life by the Galactic Overlord Zenu? Nope - Scientology says it was, and so it's up to you to disprove it!
You can't just make any ludicrous claim you like and then defend it on the grounds that "religion doesn't have to prove its claims". Religion should be held to the same standard of evidence as any other belief.
Sorry, I've missed something here. What is catholic doctoring?
I seem to think that Doctor Ian Paisley is a Presbyterian Doctor, but I haven't heard his activities described as Presbyterian Doctoring.
And I certainly wouldn't want Doctor John Reid the politician to operate on me either, especially as he never was a MD. Political Doctoring?
I've always understood that oral traditions are incredibly accurate. When all you have to record things is your own mind, you can develop incredible rote learning abilities.
Aboriginal historical/genealogical records would be a good example of this.